The Beast's Legacy
by sarcastronaut
Summary: Complete! An attempt at a direct sequel to OtGW; I'm trying to stay true to the spirit of the original, albeit expanding the mythological reach a little. Wirt & Greg come back from the Unknown, yet the memories keep haunting and unsettling them. When a chance to return to the mysterious world finally presents itself, there's no telling what they'll find there this time around.
1. Chapter 1: The Bell

The magic golden bell was biding its time on a bookshelf next to a couple of dusty encyclopedias until late February, creeping closer and closer to the edge late in the night, when only the curious Moon was up to witness its misbehaviour. Then one afternoon the bell toppled over and fell on the floor, its tinkling instantly distracting Wirt and Greg from their dark thoughts and sending a clear message of hope – the first they'd had in months.

The snows were retreating, making way for the first warm, uncertain breaths of the spring, but inside both of the brothers there were dead icy wastelands.

Wirt was growing more and more alienated from the world as the days rolled by. The more he thought about the Unknown, the more ideas he got about its true nature – but, oddly, the realisation only made him more and more fascinated with it. It was a morbid fascination and an impossibly irrational one, but Wirt was unable to let go of that hazy fever dream.

At first it was contested by the obsession with Sara, the euphoria of survival and relief of acceptance that overtook him immediately upon the return, but it didn't take him much time to grow sick of her presence in his life, as a friend or otherwise. Somehow the flame that had once threatened to devour him from inside went out like the lantern of the Beast, and even though Sara was a lot more pleasant company than the Beast, Wirt went on to consider her just as unwelcome.

It wasn't her in particular who suffered because of the unexpected changes in his perception of the world. Wirt lost touch with all the people whom he had already had trouble calling friends, and shied away from the classmates. When the night descended, he spent hours staring into the darkness of the room, and his dreams were full of strange, menacing grey shapes which he had to fight for what seemed like ages before earning a single glimpse at the Unknown – and then he immediately woke up in cold sweat and more tired than the night before. It was hard to avoid being asocial anymore, it was even harder to fight this ridiculous variation of survivor's guilt which manifested even though nobody had died. Eventually, some time around Christmas, Wirt stopped even trying.

Unsurprisingly, the only person whom he needed more than ever in these dark days was his half-brother.

Greg's wilting was why nobody in the family largely paid any attention to Wirt's own state of mind. The latter had already earned a reputation of a sad, disenchanted moaner, which had been attributed to his adolescence, but seeing the ever cheerful, energetic Greg waste away and shrink into his shell got his parents seriously worried. In a couple of weeks after the brothers' return from the Unknown the school called their mother to discuss the drastic changes in her younger son's attitude to homework, classwork, behaviour and, consequently, life. Wirt managed to handle basic school activities despite his longing for the Unknown, but Greg, as usual, submerged all of himself in that yearning, leaving nothing on the surface.

The punishments were about as ineffective a solution as possible, since Greg spent most of the days in silence and gloom anyway. TV or the lack of it mattered little to him. The attempts at conversation were heartbreaking, but only for his parents – he only one he seemed interested in talking to was Jason Funderburker (the frog) and, occasionally, a few words were exchanged with Wirt, but only when they were alone and only on the subject of the Unknown. The attempt at forcefully separating him from the frog resulted in a horrible fit full of screeching and shouting and other noises Wirt hadn't even known his brother was capable of producing. The doctor, whom their parents hadn't hesitated to involve after that particular incident, attributed all of that to the post-traumatic stress disorder and subjected Greg to various sorts of therapy, which didn't seem to help him in the slightest. Jason Funderburker (the frog) still had a better effect on him than all the doctors put together.

The problem with the therapy, Wirt deduced, was that it was grounded in the rational world where the Unknown didn't exist and couldn't exist. The truth, however, was that it very much existed and beckoned the brothers every day and every night in their minds. He tried to help Greg as best as he could, so they spent hours silently slogging through unenthusiastic sessions of boring board games and plodding through fantasy books that didn't seem even remotely interesting anymore, but nobody could really help Wirt himself in the first place.

They visited Eternal Garden often, together and separately, making sure their parents didn't know their kids spent so much time in such a morbid place. At first Wirt's glance used to brush across the Wall with assumed casualness each time he took a stroll around the rime-covered headstones, until one day, some time before Christmas, he dropped his satchel in the far corner of the graveyard and clumsily climbed on top of the Wall using a nearby tree. He stayed there for half an hour, hidden from view, shivering, staring at the dark railway disappearing in the distance and the ghostly greyness of the frozen lake at the bottom of the hill.

That day was the first time Wirt thought about trying to kill himself, only he had no idea if that would work as intended – and upon further consideration, he decided it definitely wouldn't. But the thought was out in the open, and he was shocked to discover how easily it came to him. He made sure to explain to his half-brother why suicide would be a terrible idea: Greg was a bright kid so one could never tell for sure he wouldn't stumble upon it himself, and Wirt was worried about his lack of self-restraint. A contemptuous "That's dumb!" he received after the explanation calmed him down a little.

If there was supposed to be another way back into the Unknown, it wasn't at all obvious to Wirt, but he couldn't let go of the conviction that such a way should exist, and he thought he would never be content again until he found it. He daydreamed about the wonderful forest, about Beatrice shrugging off her vest of feathers, about the mysterious Fishing Fish, about the Woodsman walking alone to his house – to find his daughter waiting or forever abandon the thought of ever seeing her again. He daydreamed about the wonders and mysteries they haven't yet seen. He daydreamed about the Unknown all the time, and the day when the bell fell down on its own accord was no exception.

It was also the day when their Grandfather was to be buried.


	2. Chapter 2: The Wall

"D-did you do something to that bell?" asked Wirt. He didn't know how exactly Jason Funderburker had managed to part with it, and he wasn't sure he wanted to. What mattered was that the curious little bell since that day had been their everyday reminder that the Unknown wasn't some sort of shared hallucination.

Wirt and especially Greg had tried everything from waving it at the top of the graveyard wall to facing each other and ominously chanting: "The ringing of the bell commands you… _to return to the Unknown!_ ", but it had been clear that all the magical properties of the golden statuette had remained in its native world.

"Oh, what I didn't do to that bell…" murmured Greg absentmindedly. "Hey, it's probably the wind or something, really…"

His little brother was being rational – that's how bad the situation had become. Wirt shook his head, picked up the bell and looked at it closely. The figurine still reminded him of Lorna, and the expression of its skull-like face underneath the fine bonnet was just as perplexed as before. He rang it gingerly, and the melodic tinkling sent shivers down his spine. He felt the smell of a forest in his nostrils, the taste of true spring on his tongue. He felt so different.

"Did you feel it?"

He turned to Greg and found him wistfully staring at the window, his mouth half-open and his large eyes shining. Wirt rang the bell again, and this time he could almost hear Ms. Langtree calling her students to lunch, or the frog ferry reaching the riverbank. It was the melody of magic and adventure, and he had never heard the bell sing this hypnotic tune in their world. The Unknown wasn't exactly there, in their old room in the middle of the town, but it felt like it was somewhere a lot closer than usual.

"I think this bell stayed here for too long, that's what I think", said Greg, finally looking at his brother. He was desperately trying to restrain his hopefulness, although it shined brightly through his gloomy façade. "I feel kinda sorry for it, you know, stuck in this boring world in this boring town in this boring room when there's probably so much fun stuff to do in the Unknown".

"Not too many evil spirits to fight here, eh?"

"Yeah, unless you count that time when Jason Funderburker wanted to play The Beast and the Woodsman, but he was a clueless Beast, and he couldn't hold the flashlight, and the horns made him nervous and… Yeah, not too many, definitely".

Greg ran to his brother and grabbed the bell. He made a move as if to ring it once again, but seemed to have thought better of it and instead put it in a pocket of his jacket.

"Let's go bury Grandpa!" he said to Wirt, his face the brightest it had ever been the last few months.

Wirt managed a nervous smile which was intended to be reassuring. He got used to constant disappointment, whereas Greg was still too prone to raising vain hopes – and receiving the bitter backlash of cruel reality some time later. The bell sounded like it was up to something, but Wirt wasn't ready to embrace it as a certain truth just yet.

They got themselves ready for the funeral (Greg insisted on hiding Jason Funderburker in the inner pocket of his jacket, claiming the frog had known Grandpa for a long time and would want to say his last goodbye) and went downstairs where their parents were already waiting for them.

Grandpa was their mother's father, so there weren't any awkward "whose family is it?" moments which the brothers had already faced in the past. He died peacefully in his sleep at a quite respectable age, which, as Greg straightforwardly commented, was "a fair deal, all things considered". Their parents took the nonchalant manner in which their youngest son reacted to the death of his favourite grandparent as yet another sign of his mental disorder. Wirt decided not to call them on their duplicity: to them, apparently, both hysteria and the lack of it were troubling, which wasn't entirely fair to Greg.

Their family wasn't especially religious, which was why Greg's confident statements about "a better world" were a surprise to them. Wirt wasn't sure he subscribed to his brother's point of view – he didn't consider the Unknown to be exactly synonymous to the proof of some kind of afterlife – but he could see why Greg was taking everything in stride.

The brothers couldn't wait for the coffin to be lowered into the ground, and the priest to deal with his boring soulless speech which, frankly, had nothing to do with the Grandpa they both knew and loved. The sun was hiding behind the clouds, high in the sky, and it looked like it might rain. Grieving relatives in uniform black were standing around the grave in white snow, foreign statues to Wirt and Greg.

They managed to part from their immediate family as the service ended, claiming they needed some more time and promising to return for the commemoration dinner. Wirt wasn't sure his mom and step-dad bought it, but they clearly decided not to seek quarrels with the children on such a dark day. The brothers waited until everyone but the grizzled graveyard keeper had left the Eternal Garden, and only then ran towards the snowy wall where their last journey to the Unknown had begun.

"Do you miss Grandpa?" asked Greg as Wirt helped him reach the top. "I don't, just yet. It's weird. I miss Jason Funderburker more, and he's right here in my pocket."

Wirt did miss his Grandfather but he could see what his brother meant. Nothing felt real anymore, life or death, with the ghost of another reality hanging over their shoulders all the time.

"He bought me my first tape recorder," Wirt recalled. "And remember how you almost fed his goldfish to Mr. Heathcliff? He was livid!"

"Grandpa or Mr. Heathcliff?"

"Well, Mr. Heathcliff was quite up for it, as far as I could tell. That crazy cat…"

"Yeah," Greg pulled his motley hat with a pompon further down his ears. "About the only thing that's unfair, I think, is that Grandpa died earlier than Mr. Heathcliff. I mean, Mom has Dad and us, and we have them and each other and Jason Funderburker, too, but Mr. Heathcliff had no-one but Grandpa, right?"

They sat in silence for some time, looking at the steep woody hill just beyond the railway, with patches of bare ground already visible in the thin sheet of remaining snow. The surface of the lake glimmered deep below, between the thick black trunks.

With a sigh of resignation, Greg fished the bell out of his pocket and held it in his mittened hands. Then he lifted it above his head as high as he could, which was about the same level as his brother's shaggy hair, and rang it furiously until the sweetness of the tinkling transformed into a manic high-pitch drone. A few birds hiding in the trees among the branches took off and flew away, indignant at the disruption. When Greg stopped, there was grim satisfaction on his big round face.

Apart from Wirt's ears being unable to process simple silence for a few moments, nothing had really happened. For several minutes Greg was impatiently turning his head left and right and eventually almost lost his balance as he tried to look over his shoulder – his brother had to catch him to keep from falling backwards. He gave Wirt a guilty look and pursed his lips in disappointment.

"Maybe we should try the whole " _ringing of the bell commands you_ " stuff again?" asked Greg, never the one to abandon hope too easily, and Wirt started thinking about the way to let him down gently when he noted that his ears were playing tricks on him again.

It sounded like a rhythmical clank of a strange old engine, too small and quiet to be a train, and it came from the north, where the railway made a sharp turn around the wall. Alerted, Greg leaned closer to his brother to hear it better, and at that moment the mysterious sound drowned in a clear male voice singing:

 _Sweet is the silvery song of the railways a-leaving_

 _Eating the miles to the music of clattering wheels,_

 _Forgo the silence and darkness in which you've been living,_

 _Leave it behind, come and jump in the river of steel…_

The verse was complemented with a squeaky harmonica solo, something genuine and merry and maybe even invented on the spot. As the final notes died down in the crisp February air, the clank became discernible again, and much louder this time, and then Wirt saw an old-fashioned draisine with a hand pump appear on the railway from around the wall. It was a battered old engine, with its dark yellow paint covered by a spiderweb of cracks or peeled off in some spots, and its metal bits surrendered to rust long ago. The brothers had only seen the likes of that draisine in old cartoons and some westerns, but even the cinema hadn't been able to prepare them for meeting its crew.

The hand pump was operated by a pair of small lions – they stood upright, facing each other, and pressed the handle by turns. Each was dressed in a white linen shirt and loose black trousers with suspenders, and their fiery manes were somewhat inadequately covered by grey leather caps. One of them had a smouldering cigarette in the corner of the mouth.

Compared to the lions, the other living passenger of the draisine could have been utterly unremarkable: a tall, lean black man with short graying hair, he sat at the front edge of the platform with his feet swinging wildly, his large hand holding a harmonica next to his mouth. Only when Wirt looked closer did he notice that the man had two silver pennies for eyes. They twinkled dimly despite the sun's absence and obediently moved in his sockets like the real things. Soon, for example, they focused on the brothers who were still frozen to the spot on top of the wall, unable to mutter a word.

"That's a nice bell you have there, kids," said the stranger in calm, confident baritone, leaving no doubts as to who was singing earlier. "Brave as the sun, sad as the moon. They don't make 'em like that anymore."

Without any signal or command, the lions stopped the pump, and the draisine started slowing down, its inertia still propelling it forward.

"It was once Auntie Whispers', but Jason Funderburker swallowed it so she said we could keep it", explained Greg. "She was a nice old lady, even if a bit creepy."

"Ah, isn't she just a cloud and a half…" said the man cryptically. "So, young men, do you need a ride, or are these old eyes playing tricks on their old Charlie Acorn?"

"And… and where might you be going?" asked Wirt, suddenly finding his throat too dry to speak.

"All the way and then some, kid."

"Can you get us to the Unknown, then?" enquired Greg, his voice weak with worry and fledging hope.

The stranger flashed him a warm smile of straight yellow teeth.

"In fact, we go right through that place, believe it or not, and you should believe most of what Charlie Acorn says. Hop onboard, then, this old crazy thing won't wait forever! Birds of a feather flock together, don't they say that still?"

He pointed his harmonica to the last passenger of the draisine, lying still across the platform right behind him, and only then did the brothers see that it was the corpse of their late Grandpa.


	3. Chapter 3: Charlie

"Cripes!" cried Greg. "Hey, they've dug up our Grandpa!"

"Well, you've dug him in," retorted Charlie Acorn. "If you absolutely have to throw accusations around."

The brothers looked at each other, and Greg shrugged as if to say that the man would probably know better. Without further questions he jumped down from the wall and lumbered towards the railway, ankle-deep in the wet sticky snow. Wirt followed suit, with suspicion, disbelief and relief still battling inside him.

The lion with the cigarette glared at Greg as he approached the draisine, and left his post at the hand pump, joining his kin on the opposite side. Charlie waved for the brothers to climb on.

"The passengers on this here engine, unless dead or musically gifted, are all required to help," he announced.

"I can play clarinet," offered Wirt, staring at the pump handle doubtfully.

Charlie turned back to look at him sharply with his eye pennies.

"And do you happen to have a clarinet on you, smart-pants?"

"Well, no, but…"

"The pump it is, then."

He didn't seem entirely unfriendly, but Wirt deduced that arguing with Mr. Acorn was a rather ungrateful task. The lions gave him an understanding look, and the one without the prospect of lung cancer hanging above him even winked playfully. Wirt stood behind his brother and gingerly grabbed the handle, to which Greg's mittened little fists already clung. The draisine started off.

"Are you sure some train won't ram us from behind?" enquired Wirt after it had reached its top speed, which was surprisingly good for such a decrepit engine.

"Oh, there are no trains going down this railway as far as I know."

"I'm pretty sure there are," said Wirt stubbornly.

"Then you have my permission to worry about them trains for all I care," shrugged Charlie. "Hey, little one, is he always like that?"

"Could be way worse," replied Greg magnanimously, which earned him a light-hearted cuff on the nape. He seemed a lot more jovial than usual, and that alone was worth climbing on this draisine, in his older brother's books.

"Where are you taking our Grandpa, though?" Greg wanted to know. "Seriously, we went through all the mess with the funeral, and now you're coming and taking him some place else. Not very nice of you, if you know what I mean."

"Ah, but you don't really want him to stay there, do you? There might be further journeys down the road for him, and I'd say he's bound to miss them if you trap him in that wooden box of yours. There might be none, of course," Charlie went on, the tone of his voice indicating that he wasn't just entertaining unlikely possibilities, "or there might be something else entirely. I just drive this here old engine, though, it is not my place to know much else."

Speaking of places, Wirt didn't recognise much of the surroundings when he looked around. They gave an impression of being "proper" and "usual", but that was merely good impersonation on their part. Familiar landmarks popped up here and there, but, he decided, they only served to help the perception get used to a new reality which actually had nothing to do with the rural area south of their hometown. He felt excited, and rushing wind felt colder against his flushed cheeks.

"So why are you two seeking the Unknown?" asked Charlie.

"Who wouldn't be?" shrugged Greg. "I mean, have you ever felt like someone took all the colours from all the places in the world? Well, me and Wirt and Jason Funderburker came back there", he pointed behind his back, "from there", he pointed forward, "and it was just like that. Everything seemed dull. And empty. And like someone took some important bit out of you and never returned. I wanted to scream at things and kick stuff just because, you know," he added quietly, and Wirt was surprised to discover his brother describing his own condition so perfectly.

"I could see something when I picked you up," said Charlie, nodding slowly. "You stood out, I guess."

"Sat out," giggled Greg. "Get it? We _sat_ out on that wall. Get it?" he asked the lions, too, but they didn't seem to get it or at least acknowledge they did.

"And you, the other one?" asked Charlie. "Aren't you too old to chase unicorns instead of getting on with your life?"

"So what if I'm too old?" Wirt immediately took the defensive stance. That was exactly the sort of question he was too scared to ask himself. Did he really have any right to lead his brother on this mad journey to a strange place they had last seen while nearly dying? Will the time stay still again, or will their parents have to cope with them being absent for days? Will he force Gregory to return if his little brother refuses to go back – and will Wirt himself want to come back if they finds the Unknown again? "So what if I'm irresponsible that way or refuse to play by the rules? I don't care for that world. Greg is falling apart there. I am falling apart. Who's to decide if we are allowed to go or not when nobody else even believes in the Unknown?"

"Hey, hey, calm down a bit," said Charlie Acorn. "Don't get all worked up. Sheesh! You ask him a question – he gives you three you can't answer…"

"Sorry," muttered Wirt.

"I'm not your dad, nor am I the one to say what your dad will think…"

"He has two dads, actually!" interrupted Greg, who had always been, to Wirt's dismay, strangely jealous of the fact.

"Doesn't matter, I suppose, as long as they're not chthonic… What I mean is, you have to be yourselves if you can, and try not to listen to people saying otherwise. You live one life, or several of them, or none at all, but each of them belongs to you, so if your heart calls you to one place and someone traps your body in another, it's pretty clear what you should listen to."

This point of view seemed sensible to Wirt. He even felt relieved that an adult – a very, very old adult, he suspected, one to whom there was definitely more than met the eye – understood what he was experiencing. There was a definite lack of understanding adults in his life back in the real world.

"Oh, and stop rolling up your eyes so often", added Charlie, even though during all the journey he barely turned to look at Wirt. "Just see what it's done to me. Here, take a spare."

Still without turning, he found something in his breast pocket and threw it over his shoulder towards Wirt. Wirt's reflexes were quite rusty and, by his calculations, he definitely wasted enough time for the glimmering object to fly above his head, fall in the snow and perhaps have a cup of tea, and yet when he finally threw his hand up, his fingers locked around it nevertheless. It turned out to be a silver penny just like the one Charlie Acorn kept in his eye.

"Can I have some money, too?" frowned Greg.

"Won't need any," replied Charlie, which, judging by his meaningful cough, Greg found decidedly unlikely, but the topic was not pressed.

They travelled down the railway, which had recently climbed on top of a narrow hill. Charlie was trying to compose a new song and tested various harmonica parts, clearly disappointed with every one of them. After one particularly grating solo he sighed, put the instrument away and looked around, sizing up the tall pine trees that started to dominate the scenery.

"We seem to have reached your destination," he proclaimed. "Prepare to land!"

"All I see is a forest," said Wirt cautiously. "What do you me…"

"It's the Unknown we're talking about," interrupted Charlie. "Did you really expect a railway station?"

With that he lifted his hand and snapped his fingers. The lions left the pump handle alone, stepped towards the brothers and picked them up under the armpits.

"Er, you know, I am not at all sure it's…" stammered Wirt, feeling his feet leave the ground and jerking them wildly.

He wasn't allowed to elaborate as his lion easily threw him to the left of the moving draisine. The last thing Wirt saw before flying headfirst towards the dark pine trees was the other lion hurling his younger brother to the opposite side, which Greg, to his credit, met with an excited, "Whe-e-e-e!"

He hit the ground hard and found himself rolling down the slope, swallowing some snow from time to time and coming to the conclusion that Mr. Charlie Acorn could hardly boast any customer service skills.


	4. Chapter 4: The Owl

After tumbling down the hill like a small human avalanche for what seemed like an eternity, Wirt came to rest in a snowdrift at the very bottom. Somehow he managed not to hit any trees on his way down, and he strongly suspected it was because they were actually jumping out of his way in supernatural acts of cowardice. The other possible explanation was his uncanny luck, and Wirt knew better than to harbour such delusions.

It was a grim part of the wood he found himself in. When he got up on his feet and wiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket, Wirt looked around properly and saw tall fat trunks of pines on every side, rising as high as his eyes could reach and blocking the sun with their wide shaggy arms locked in multiple handshakes. Leafless shrubs were clustering around and between the trees, the living barbwire cutting off half the paths and making the other half difficult to use. There was no sound of birds or animals, and the oppressive silence was disrupted only by Wirt's own ragged breathing. It looked like the Unknown, but it was the Unknown at its darkest.

"Well, I got all I asked for and then some, I suppose," he muttered, looking back at the slope he had come down from. It was almost a mountain when seen from below, a huge snowy monster peppered with giant trees. His route was traced by a shallow line that twisted unnaturally between the trunks and eventually disappeared in the distance above.

Wirt thought about Greg undoubtedly finding himself in the very same situation at the other side of the hill, sighed and made the first uncertain step back up the slope. He managed five before he lost his footing, slipped and fell backwards with a groan, burying his head in the snow again. The fairytale began, and it was a very wet and cold one.

As for Greg, he enjoyed every moment of rolling down the hill and actually thought it to be the best ride he had ever had. He laughed so hard that tears poured out of his eyes and mixed with the snow on his face, and then he made an angel, waving his arms like a madman. He felt like home and he was happy. Only when Greg was completely depleted of energy did he notice Wirt's absence by his side, but it seemed like a small disturbance in the proper course of events, and surely his brother would eventually come find him, because now that they were back in the Unknown nothing could possibly go wrong. Jason Funderburker, by the look of him, thought so as well.

Greg jumped to his feet, adjusted his hat and chose a direction at random – by spinning on the spot with his arm outstretched until he felt like he was about to fall. It was a wild but quiet place, and Greg was feeling safe among the massive pines and knee-deep snow. Neither the prospect of having to spend the night outside nor the possibility of meeting a hostile animal bothered him much at that point. Greg started trudging forward, away from the slope, entertaining Jason Funderburker with a sophisticated, albeit one-sided conversation:

"It's a good place to start, I think, because your expectations are really low at this point. Any fun thing we'll see next is bound to be better than this, right? I think I'm right, in any case. I hope you agree. But, seriously, Jason Funderburker, please don't think I'll be paying much attention to your complaints, you're not a pop star anymore and frankly I think you're not made for the life on the road in the first place, and, in fact…"

The monologue was interrupted by the sound of a branch creaking treacherously under the weight of a huge creature somewhere above his head. Greg craned his neck – more curious than afraid – and politely said hello to a long-eared owl who was staring at him intently, its yellow eyes glowing with intelligence. The owl said nothing, which meant that intelligence might have been there, but good manners definitely weren't.

Greg shrugged and continued his journey to a destination unknown, having to lift his legs with great difficulty to free his feet from sticky snow. The owl, he noticed, decided to follow him, heavily flying from tree to tree and shaking off small cascades of snow from the branches it landed on. Despite its looming presence, Greg kept on talking to Jason Funderburker, albeit in a more subdued tone.

"Yeah, so… about the Cloud City. Would be nice to check up on it, I guess, and see if they're still managing to keep the old North Wind locked up. Do you remember the Reception Committees, Jason Funderburker? I'd love to be on a Reception Committee one day. It sounds much better than some stupid marching band, and probably pays better. It's in the name, isn't it? I think it is. In any case…"

Greg stopped short when he saw that the owl flew ahead of him and landed on an old stump, crushing its perfect half-sphere of a snow cap. Its eyes fixed on Greg, as if silently urging him to come closer, and the boy made an uncertain step forward, still elated because of the return to the Unknown and thus caring little about fear. The owl let him come within five feet before finally announcing:

"You're going the wrong way."

It had a low, hollow, yet melodic female voice, and where it lacked friendliness, it made up for in persuasiveness.

"Wrong way to where, exactly?" Greg enquired. "And hello again, by the way. Good afternoon."

The Owl didn't pay attention to the not-so-subtle hint.

"There is danger in this place, and death, and suffering."

"You must have missed the news," he said amiably. "We disposed of the Beast, me and my brother Wirt. A few months ago, actually. And the Woodsman helped a bit. He was a strange fellow, though, so he can't really complain people don't trust him all that much. I even hit him on the head once with a…"

"I know that the Beast is destroyed, child," said the Owl. "But his legacy lives on, and it is of a great value to some, and of a great danger to the rest of us in the Unknown."

"What legacy are we talking about? Is it the creepy lantern?"

The Owl slowly blinked, and then her eyes focused on Greg once again.

"The Lantern of Souls was but one of the Beast's possessions. There are other artefacts – items of great power that he had collected over the years from all over the Unknown and beyond, lying, stealing, persuading the owners and keepers with his dark silver tongue. The Beast was a hoarder, though – he liked having them more than using them, for which these lands should be forever grateful. Now that he's gone, those artefacts are left without a master, and all the dangerous creatures of the world want to possess them."

"Uh-huh," was all that Greg could say to that. The forest around him had definitely became darker in an instant, and he started shivering as if only now realizing he had spent quite some time in the cold snow.

"There is an obstacle, however, for those evil creatures. The Beast's treasury can not be accessed just by anyone – only a corrupted soul whom he had touched can reach his artefacts. So those dark wizards, witches and monsters were waiting, and planning, and sniffing out the bits of truth within the swamp of gossip. But they could not find anyone suitable… until you arrived today."

Greg was fascinated, even if also unnerved, by the Owl's story up until this point. Then his involuntarily opened mouth just as involuntarily shut tight, and he looked at the Owl in utter disbelief.

"Er-r, me? Like, _me_ me? I can safely say I am not corrupted, thank you very much! Jason Funderburker can vouch for me, we played poker many times and I never _ever_ cheated, well, maybe apart from that time when he was about to win my…"

The Owl cut him off with that same low, patient voice which seemed a little hostile if only because it kept saying unpleasant truths.

"You and your brother have been seen by the wrong eyes when you travelled with the Ferryman. Luckily, the Guardians of the Unknown saw you first and charged me with finding you before someone else might."

"The Guardians?" Greg's face lit up with curiosity. "That sounds awesome! Who are they? Is Beatrice with you? By the way, are you, er-r, enchanted, too, just like she was?"

"No, I don't know of any Beatrice. And… yes, I was not always a bird."

The Owl gave off a quiet hoot full of longing and sadness. Greg shivered when he heard it and made a mental note not to throw rocks at anything with wings while in the Unknown, because clearly he might either hit some nice cursed lady, or get himself cursed by hitting one of the few real birds.

"Uh, sorry to hear that," was all he said.

"We have to go right now," said the Owl, taking off the stump and flapping her massive wings. "We haven't got a moment to lose."

"What about Wirt, though?" asked Greg, turning back to look at the massive hill. "He's a bit helpless, to be honest with you. And I think if anyone's corrupted, it has to be him. I'm telling you, if it wasn't for me, the Beast would still rule this place, and Wirt would be a stupid tree!"

"The Guardians must have sent someone to look after your brother," called the Owl from the branch she landed on – it belonged to a pine some way to the west of where Greg was originally heading. "Hurry! We must leave this place before the treasure hunters find you!"

"See, Jason Funderburker," said Greg to his frog as he hurried after the Owl, "I told you we'd have an adventure!"


	5. Chapter 5: The Fox

The Owl led Greg deeper into the forest, where the winter was hiding and defying the spring. In some forgotten places the snow managed to reach his waist, which prompted Jason Funderburker to escape the hitherto safe positions on the inside of Greg's coat and climb on top of his head. They crossed a small frozen stream, where Greg attempted a few ice-skating tricks and got a bit carried away, both literally and metaphorically. The Owl instructively reminded him that there wasn't time for follies, which made him almost happy Wirt wasn't there, as those two would have made a boredom brigade of unstoppable power.

"Where are we going anyway?" he asked as they were skirting another hill, this time a considerably less imposing one.

"We shall reach Llewellyn's Gift before sunset."

"Whose gift? Will he share?"

"It's a placename," explained the Owl patiently. "Llewellyn's Gift is a small valley just beyond Silverwood. There is a hidden cottage where we shall meet some of the other Guardians, and they will decide what to do and how to protect you."

"Uh."

As Greg decided not to elaborate, the bird had to ask him:

"Is there something wrong?"

"Well, you know, Beatrice told us she'd get us to this kind helpful lady called Adelaide, but she turned out to be a nasty witch. Adelaide, not Beatrice, I mean – Beatrice was kind of all right despite all that… I'd love to have her here with us, you know," he mused. "Beatrice, not Adelaide."

"I am sure wherever she is, she wishes the same. And I can swear on my very life that I am not taking you to any witch nor planning to come out as one."

Greg uh-ed once more, which was his wordless opinion on birds' vows, but this time the Owl decided not to keep the fire of the dialogue going. She wasn't a very conversational bird, just like the actual owls, and she bored him to death by nagging him to go faster instead of ice-skating or playing snowballs. Greg, however, wasn't going to charge her with evildoing on such a flimsy evidence. He decided to keep his eyes open instead, and comforted himself with the knowledge that if he survived the Beast, he can definitely survive a suspicious solemn owl.

"Whatever happened to you anyway?" enquired Greg. "Why on earth did you think throwing rocks at an owl was a good idea?"

The Owl looked confused.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, I mean, to be turned into an owl you must have…"

He was interrupted by a thin, nasty snigger – Jamie Douglas from his class produced a noise like that all the time, and it infuriated everyone around him, which, Greg supposed, was why he persisted with it. Jamie Douglas, though, had never had the chance to surprise anyone with that snigger in a supposedly empty forest where no sunlight dwelled, so Greg gasped and took a step back, anxiously looking around and seeing no-one.

"Who's there?" hooted the Owl sharply. "Show yourself!"

She descended and spread her wings defensively around Greg, or, depending on one's interpretation, hid behind his back.

The mysterious stranger whistled in appreciation – a mocking sound that seemed to come from every side at once. Then a sly, melodious voice with no obvious source started singing – first quietly, but steadily gaining volume.

 _Check your locks_

 _And count your flock_

 _See that you don't fall to a hoax, good sir._

 _Unleash your dogs_

 _And wind your clocks_

 _And don't ever listen to my coax, good sir…_

The playfulness of the song and the performance didn't do much to hide the implied threat. Even fearless Greg swallowed a lump in his throat, while Jason Funderburker burrowed as deep as he could into the side pocket of the boy's jacket – only his thin, webbed feet remained outside, jerking wildly.

 _Deep dark Nox_

 _Sees chicks and cocks_

 _Scared of their shadows and wily old Fox, good sir._

 _Croaks and mocks,_

 _And creeps, and stalks,_

 _And robs you down to the last pair of socks, good sirrrrr_ what have we here?

The ingratiating voice with a hint of a strange accent effortlessly turned the last line into a question without breaking the rhythm. "Here" coincided with the appearance of its master: from somewhere between the trees which seemed to grow too close to each other to allow anyone slip past them, emerged a tall, graceful figure of a Fox. The Fox wore a sleek blue coat, a long yellow scarf that fluttered behind him like a banner, and the most magnificent black fedora Greg had ever seen. Under the hat there was a maniacally grinning muzzle, and two emerald-green eyes shone wildly in the near darkness of the forest.

"You," was how the Owl greeted him, disdain dominating her voice.

"Me," the Fox simply answered, grinning even more widely. "And if it isn't our little feathery Guardian – and, as it happens, _guarding_. Whom might you be guarding, my dear? You know you can tell me anything, right?"

"Owl, who's that?" Greg narrowed his eyes in what he perceived to be as threatening an expression as a human being can possibly produce.

"Yes, let us be introduced to one another!" the Fox cried in jubilance, spinning around in place. Or not quite in place – Greg had a nasty suspicion that just before the pirouette the Fox had been a good couple of feet further away from them. "My name is Monsieur Renard – an adventurer, an entrepreneur, a fantastic specimen in every possible aspect. Your name, on the other hand, is the Key to Riches, Wonders and Powers. Nice to meet you, Key! Please tell me you're glad to meet me, too."

"I'm actually Gregory," said the newly-named, taking a step back and feeling the Owl do the same. "And I'm not glad, because you're creepy."

"Oh, it seems I am too late to the party," the Fox waved his paw in exasperation and performed a ridiculous somersault, gaining a little bit more ground. "You've clearly spent too much time with this tedious no-good bird."

"I met her a couple of hours ago!"

"Like I said: too much," Monsieur Renard flashed a smile of sparse, sharp, snow-white teeth. He took another step forward. "Come with me, young man. I'll show you the Unknown like you've never seen it before! We'll take the world and give it back and make it ours again! We'll booze and carouse on that old windbag's treasure for days and weeks!"

"I'm too small to booze and carouse." Greg was all reason.

"Well… I can booze and carouse for both of us," the Fox assured him. "Boozing and carousing is generally not a problem. What I need is that small, Beast-ridden hand of yours to procure my, m-m… how shall we put it… share of the inheritance. Which is, as it happens, all of the inheritance."

"I'd rather not, you know."

"So young and so impolite," the Fox made a face. "In this case, I suppose…"

Before Greg could hear what Monsieur Renard supposed, the well-dressed predator lunged forward in a murderous blur, his scarf blazing a trail behind him. Greg wouldn't even have a chance to be scared properly if not for the Owl, who pushed him down in the snow and just as quickly rushed to meet the attack, thrusting her talons forward like daggers. For all her taciturnity, this time she gave out a piercing screech that must have reached the farthest corners of the forest. The Fox lost his fedora, grunted and shuffled back, seemingly unprepared for the repulse, but as the Owl attempted to hit him with her beak, he deftly evaded it and counterattacked with his deceptively slender paw, and the impact sent the bird spinning into the snow.

The Fox howled, a mixture of joy and blood-thirst and anything Greg was too scared to discern, and threw a mad glance at the boy, but in doing so he allowed the Owl the time to recover her balance. She rushed towards Renard and latched onto his back, furiously pecking his head and neck with her powerful beak. The Fox threw himself on the ground and rolled around to shake her off, and the Owl screeched again and again, madly flapping her wings, and out of that mad confusion of feathers, fur and snow one word reached Greg's freezing ears:

"Run!"

And he did just that, ploughing through the snow as fast as his legs would take him and not daring to look back.


	6. Chapter 6: The Madman

Eventually Wirt gave up on trying to climb up the hill. His shoes were full of snow and his nose of snot, he felt frustrated and exhausted. He hoped his brother had enough presence of mind not to do anything stupid while Wirt was searching for a way across, although his pessimistic nature was busy mass-producing thoughts that were anything but reassuring. He stumbled ahead along the foot of the hill and mumbled incoherently his opinions about the wishes that tended to come true in the most annoying way possible.

Unless the journey with Charlie Acorn had warped time as well as space, sundown was still a distant prospect, even if such estimations seemed false in such a dark, unfriendly place. Occasionally Wirt passed through places open enough to see the sun still hanging high in the sky, but then the deep shadows of the giant gnarled trees embraced him again, the snow became dim like ancient silverware, and the memory quickly turned into an illusion. He hoped that Greg would at the very least manage to find a warm safe place to spend the night – before selfishly reminding himself that his own situation was no better.

After walking for what seemed like an hour or so, Wirt allowed himself some rest – and he used the time wisely, by climbing on top of a snowy rock and wallowing in misery and crippling self-doubt. The Unknown felt unwelcoming, and in that Wirt saw the reflection of his uncertainties: leaving home without saying a word to their parents, intruding in the place where they clearly didn't belong. He tried to imagine the time turning back for him to get a chance to put his foot down and make himself and his brother snap out of whatever had been haunting them instead of following this crazy dream. He couldn't see that happening, however – at least not yet.

Still holding his chin between the two palms, Wirt glanced up and only then noticed a couple of naked hairy legs dangling from the tree directly opposite the rock. Their nakedness and hairiness were rather revolting and made him think about a victim of a suicide who got stuck up there, but there was no lifelessness in them – the legs seemed to dangle on their owner's accord, not on a whim of the wind. It was further proven by an equally hairy face appearing between the branches of the pine. Wirt involuntarily thought of a forest fire – so red was the shaggy mane framing the wrinkled face of a man in his fifties.

"Hello?" said Wirt, mixing curiosity and disgust in unequal proportions.

The light-blue eyes of the stranger remained fixed at him for several long moments, after which he replied in a slightly theatrical voice:

"You don't belong here, young fella. You don't belong here at all!"

He definitely had a point, although Wirt preferred to disagree with weirdos on principle – the fact of him usually being one as well made little difference.

"I'm not sure you can be an expert when it comes to belonging," he said, "unless I walked right into some sort of a hippie community."

"Oh, but I'm mad," a long hairy arm appeared next to the face with the only purpose of waving dismissively, after which it was sucked back into the needles. "I can do whatever the hell pleases me. It's the sane people acting gone in the head that worry me."

"Very well," said Wirt snarkily, stood up and shook the snow off his clothes. "Sorry for plaguing you with my presence. Have a nice day."

He turned his back to the unnerving stranger and started briskly walking in the same direction as before. He might have needed to know the fastest way to get across the hill, but asking that naked redhead freak in the tree somehow didn't seem like a good idea. Wirt had almost convinced himself that the unfortunate meeting was over when he heard a whooshing sound above his head followed up by the rustle of needles some way ahead. He stared at the pine along the path he was taking, which was swaying suspiciously, and soon saw the familiar pair of legs appear from the lowest branches. The head materialised just a few moments later.

"Oh, what the…" exhaled Wirt, looking back and gauging the distance between the two trees. The result was disheartening.

"Your impoliteness offends me, but, on the other hand, I'm mad, so why would I care?" mused the stranger as if nothing happened.

"What do you want from me?" Wirt crossed his arms on his chest. "Who are you?"

"I need nothing and ask for nothing," said the man, "I travel far and wide, I look everywhere and see most of it, apart from those little somethings that always want to be on their own, and my name is Bill Sweeney, very nice to meet you."

"Please let's not shake hands."

"And what I see most clearly is that you don't belong here," repeated Bill, but there was no accusation in his voice.

"Can't seem to find a place where I do," mumbled Wirt, mentally ordering his face not to flush. This time he battled the urge to walk out on the stranger, disgruntled teen-style. What was the point of such dramatics anyway when this guy seemed to be able to jump for a hundred feet? If Bill Sweeney wanted to keep the conversation going, he would. "Do you by any chance know what's the quickest way to get over that hill?"

"I do, but the quickest way is the last thing you need," was the reply.

"Can _I_ decide what I need?"

"Oh, no offense but by the looks of you it doesn't seem like you should," answered Bill almost apologetically.

Wirt wanted to scream.

"Ve… very helpful! Who… Wh-why… What would I even do without your help!"

Stammering in frustration, Wirt stuck his hands in his pockets with enough force to almost tear the fabric and looked straight ahead as he marched past the tree and the ridiculous bully contained thereon, determined not to pay Bill Sweeney any attention from now on, unless he would suddenly turn violent.

The further he went, the more he unwillingly braced himself in anticipation – and sure enough, soon there was the familiar "whoosh!" once again, and then he heard Bill's exhausted sigh from a short branchy pine ahead of him. True to his intention, Wirt said nothing as he walked past the dangling feet.

"Mad as I am," Bill said to his back, "I only want to point out that the Hunter is scouring the place you seem to be heading towards. I saw him in flesh a quarter of an hour ago."

"A hunter," repeated Wirt, reluctantly slowing the pace.

" _The_ Hunter," accentuated Bill. "The warden, the sheriff, the patrolman of the Unknown – call him whatever you like, it'll still be him."

Wirt wanted to point out that "The Hunter" was definitely the most suspicious option of the four names Bill could have chosen, but decided to cut to the chase instead.

"Is he… like the Beast?" he blurted. "Or does he, er, hunt the ones like the Beast? Why exactly should I be worried?"

"Well, like I said, you look desperately out of place, boyo," reminded Bill Sweeney. "The Hunter does not take lightly to the likes of you. You'll be flying out of the Unknown's borders the moment he or his hounds so much as catch a glimpse of you."

" _H-hounds_? Now there are hounds?" Wirt stopped and ordered himself to stay critical. If Bill was sane enough to proclaim himself mad, then maybe, just maybe, all of this wasn't some sort of inane rambling. Then again, he _did_ say he was mad, so perhaps that was enough to discredit anything else he might say afterwards. The part about not belonging here, though – that was suspiciously close to home, from a madman or not. He finally turned back to look at Bill Sweeney's fiery head.

"Oh, don't be afraid, young fella," the redheaded tree-dweller assured him, "no actual harm will come to you. The Hunter will just kick you out of here like he does with any and all who don't belong here. He'll tear you out of the Unknown's soil like a nasty weed that you are."

"Er… Thank you. Really needed to hear that."

"Rip you like an old Band-Aid. Throw you out like a gurrier out of a boozer. Uncork you like a…"

"Look, I get it!"

"Good," Bill shrugged. "I'm only after trying to be helpful. The man's a nuisance is all I'm saying. He might go away and hunt elsewhere, but you never know. I travel all around the place and always stumble upon him – figuratively speaking, of course, he is not in a habit of climbing trees. You can always ask someone among the locals to help you across the hill," he added. "There's a river over there, unless the madness got to my memory," he pointed to the right of where Wirt was originally heading, "and some cottages are scattered along its banks. There are some nasty folks, though!" he snorted. "So be careful. People throwing sticks and rocks at you, that sort of thing. I heard one of them got her comeuppance the other day. Got turned into a bluebird! Ha! Wish I did some magic, too, apart from this whole long-jumping baloney… Them kids these days…"

Wirt was too busy contemplating whether or not to believe what the stranger had told him about the Hunter, so it took a few moments for Bill's next words to register in his brain. And then he had to contemplate whether or not to believe _those_ words, although the odds were clearly rigged this time.

"What did you say?!" Wirt exclaimed, his eyes widening.

"What did I say?" Bill looked just as perplexed and looked around suspiciously. "Was I mumbling something daft again? Ah, it's all good craic until you remember that you're mad…"

"No, no, just now! Something about the girl and a bluebird! Is she… Does she live nearby?"

"Well, why would I know?" Bill looked almost offended that Wirt would ask him something like that. "Bluebirds, boyo! Do they migrate in winter? Who knows. I migrate in winter, for example. To be fair, I migrate every season. It's more fun this way." He scratched his beard. "What was I talking about…?"

"The girl who got turned into a bluebird!" Wirt almost stomped his foot in frustration. "Is her house over there, near that river you mentioned? Are you sure?"

"Am I sure? Am I sure? That bruise on my knee didn't go out for weeks, boyo, for weeks! Damn right it's over there. Avoid it like plague. Better give yourself up to the Hunter before talking to the likes of her, that's my advice…"

But Wirt was already moving towards the trees to the left, in the direction Bill had pointed earlier. A new surge of hope was warming him from the inside, and heavy snow didn't seem like that much of an obstacle anymore. Of course, Bill Sweeney could have lied or simply got it wrong, but Wirt preferred to believe that the self-proclaimed madman's memory had been true in this particular case. If Beatrice indeed was somewhere close, she would tell him all about the supposed threat of the Hunter and help him find Greg. But even these potential practical benefits of finding her, however, could not outshine the burning desire to simply see her again, for the first time since that strange day when Wirt cut her wings with Adelaide's magic scissors and had to say goodbye.

"Find yourself before the Hunter does!" was the last ever thing Wirt heard from Mad Bill Sweeney.


	7. Chapter 7: The Porters

The deep woods were slowly giving way as Wirt walked on. The trees became more uptight and refused to lock each other in those strong embraces, the snow on the ground all around them seemed softer and much easier to traverse. Soon there were large chunks of pale blue sky above Wirt's head. He only had to walk for a quarter of an hour more before he reached the bank of a frozen winding river. It twisted so chaotically that at first Wirt wasn't sure in which direction he was supposed to go, but then he spotted a thin but steady line of smoke rising in the distance and decided it was as good a place to start as any.

He seemed to be breathing easier now that the dark forest had been left behind, and even allowed himself to forget about Greg for a moment, his head primarily occupied with the thoughts about Beatrice. Wirt didn't realize or didn't let himself realise just how much he had wanted to see her again while they suffered in silence at home. He remembered how they had parted, some words which had been left unspoken, the mystery in her mischievous blue eyes when he had said goodbye – and felt his cheeks blush. All the butterflies in the whole of the Unknown were probably trapped inside his stomach at the moment. Wirt walked along the treacherous, uneven riverbank, submerged in the warmth of tingling memories and hopeful thoughts.

The first cottage he reached was a wide stocky cabin built of dark brown logs, its roof flat and covered in snow, its door twice as wide than seemed necessary to Wirt. The reasoning behind such a choice became obvious when he came closer, too excited to experience doubt or fear, and knocked loudly on the hard surface, for the door was opened by a rather grumpy-looking centaur. He was wrapped in tartan plaid and a massive white scarf, the end of which fell all the way down to the hay-covered floor.

"What?" the centaur neighed, frowning the wrinkly face of a man in his sixties. His white mane was trapped underneath a worn black hairnet.

Wirt, to his credit, let his jaw drop only halfway before regaining control.

"I'm… Hello there. I'm actually looking for the family that got turned into bluebirds some time ago. There was a girl called Beatrice. Would you happen to…"

"Up the river, the watermill. The whole lot of them."

After this curt reply curiously lacking verbs the centaur slammed the door in Wirt's face, and the young man heard the muffled sound of hoofbeat mixed with some unintelligible grumpy noises. He wondered if the rock thrown at the bluebird was but the final chapter of Beatrice's misbehaviour against the local fauna before she got her comeuppance.

It wasn't a proper village: the buildings were unevenly spread along the banks of the river, some far away from the water, some looming right above it. One construction in particular looked as if the architect had spent too much time thinking about willows and the Tower of Pisa. The Unknown characteristically sported the odd mix of the mundane and the unusual. Next to one cottage there were perfectly normal clothes hanging on the thick washing line, but after coming a bit closer Wirt realised that the line itself was a living snake, who looked rather embarrassed with its predicament. Near another building there was a cluster of trees decorated with birdhouses – or, after a more careful inspection, clocks styled as such, all showing different time but producing a strangely melodic rhythm with their ticking. Wirt saw fit to avoid being spotted by the inhabitants and preferred to take wide berths through the deep snow instead of approaching the cottages.

He saw the watermill and the adjacent house from afar and was excited to spot the thick gusts of smoke coming out of the chimney. The massive wooden wheel stood silent and unmoving just above the surface of the river, obviously having been lifted before the winter frosts. Wirt had no idea what he was going to say to Beatrice and her family, but he knew he wanted to blurt the stupidest things available in English if only he saw her once more.

A variety of voices reached his ears when he approached the door, and he imagined he had heard hers. Wirt's heart was about to jump out of his throat as he lifted his fist and knocked at the door, and he couldn't believe how nervous and uncertain of everything he suddenly became, even by his impressive standards.

A redheaded boy in his early teens opened the door and looked positively stunned as he examined Wirt's face, no doubt projecting the pointy hat onto the visitor's head and mentally wrapping his shoulders in the dark blue cape.

"Mo-o-o-o-o-om!" the boy shouted after coming to a certain conclusion.

The other children of the numerous family gradually gathered behind the boy's back, throwing curious glances at Wirt and murmuring among themselves, the colour of their hair the very shade of burnt orange he associated with that short precious glimpse of Beatrice in the human form. Of Beatrice herself, however, there was no sight. But she was probably out walking with her dog or helping her mom in the kitchen, Wirt told himself. She had to be.

Finally a plump round-faced woman in a homespun dress and a white bonnet got through the crowd of her children, and it took her a single look at him to gasp, "Oh, dear!" and impatiently beckon for Wirt to come in.

"What are you doing here? Is your brother with you? Is everything all right?" she asked with concern, making him sit on a chair next to the fireplace and take off his jacket, which was followed by a warm plaid being wrapped around his shoulders. Wirt was a bit disconnected from reality at that point, because, while he had assumed that Mad Bill or even the centaur might have lied or mistaken, he hadn't expected to find Beatrice's family but not herself.

"Yeah, we're… er… look, Mrs…" he almost called her "Mrs. Bluebird" before shutting his mouth.

"It's Porter, dear."

"Mrs. Porter, is Beatrice… around?" The intonation fell like an empty bucket in a deep dark well because the look on Mrs. Porter's face gave it all away.

"You missed her by a few days, actually," she replied with an obviously artificial indifference in her voice.

"Missed her? How?"

"She has… gone on an adventure," Mrs. Porter nervously waved her hand in the general direction of the door, absent expression in her eyes. "Off to see the world or some such nonsense. Stubborn, stubborn girl… Anyways, dear, what brought _you_ here, please do tell?"

Wirt proceeded to retell his story with a tangible emptiness in his stomach, for the hope lit by Mad Bill had flickered out like a torch in a gale. He had no idea why Beatrice's absence bothered him so much but it just seemed so wrong not to find her that now, surrounded by the caring Mrs. Porter and her children, he felt he was more alone than in that dark endless forest.

Despite his attempts to wiggle out of the plaid for the rather noble cause of going to find Greg as soon as possible, Wirt was told in no uncertain terms that he would have dinner first. He refrained from the jokes about dirt, and in fact the food turned out to be delicious: apparently he had had too much on his mind to notice his hunger. He tried to sustain the small talk initiated by the Porter kids who wanted to know everything about his adventures in the "other" world, but eventually found himself being taciturn to the point of unfriendliness, which the perceptive Mrs. Porter took as a sign and shooed the children away to give him some space.

"Wh-… Why did she go?" he asked quietly, poking at the remains of the soup with his spoon and avoiding Mrs. Porter's eyes.

"I guess she got bored with us, dear," she shrugged. "With our mill, with our house, with stealing apples from Mr. Ness's garden every summer… Beatrice grew up a lot during that time with you, you know. I didn't expect her to. I guess… mothers never do, do they?"

A short silence fell which Wirt falsely interpreted as expectant and was almost prepared to answer that no, they probably didn't, when Mrs. Porter continued:

"It wasn't really sudden: she told me about it some time after Christmas, and then we talked almost every day. I knew I couldn't convince her to stay but I couldn't just accept that either. Even Frank did, eventually. Beatrice promised to wait until spring – that's about the only compromise we had reached – and even that was not to be, because one morning that talking horse appeared, Fred or whatever its name is, and she got it into her head that it was a sign to set off…"

Mrs. Porter sighed and stood up to put Wirt's empty bowl away, sneakily wiping the corner of her eye with a sleeve.

"So, where exactly did she go? And for how long?"

"Would that I knew, dear," said Mrs. Porter, and there was such sadness in her voice that Wirt immediately started hating himself. He stared at the wooden surface of the table before finding enough strength to ask:

"Are you angry at her, Mrs. Porter?"

A steamy cup of tea appeared before him, and then he felt a warm plump hand brush his hair.

"No, dear. I guess she did what she had to do."

 _But you worry yourself sick and wish she were back regardless, don't you_ , Wirt wanted to ask, but the answer seemed too obvious to him to even bother.

Once he drank the tea, it was definitely time to go, and even the overprotective Mrs. Porter accepted that locating Greg before it's too late was the priority.

"Finding the Riddler's Vein – the only proper pass to the other side of the hill – is not difficult at all once you get on the Redwood Road," she explained, "but if the Hunter's around indeed, and I see no reason not to trust old Bill, then it might prove to be a bit of a problem. Besides, there are some other creeps stalking the land, if the rumours are true…"

She fell silent and shook her head ruefully, no doubt thinking about Beatrice again.

"He can find a guide in 'The Pilgrim's Rest'!" offered the boy who had opened the door. He was clearly the most curious of the bunch, for he had sneaked closer towards his mother and their guest when it became clear the latter was about to leave.

"A bunch of no-gooders, the lot of them," was Mrs. Porter's rather critical assessment. "Honestly, Stephen, have I not told you to stay away from that place?"

"No-one there likes the Hunter too much, though," Stephen shrugged his shoulders. "Just sayin' ".

"Hm-m… That much is true, I guess."

"And I could show him the way!" offered Stephen readily, which was followed by a heated argument eventually won by the boy. Stubbornness clearly ran in this family, and the younger generation was a lot more proficient in using it the best way possible. Mrs. Porter equipped Wirt with a leather backpack stuffed with supplies and a couple of old blankets, and sent him on his way with a hug and a hardly reassuring albeit sincere, "Don't worry, dear."

"You too, Mrs. Porter," he replied, sensing that he wasn't the only one who needed that support. "And thanks for everything."

It seemed a lot colder outside after some time spent in the cozy living room of the Porters. The sun had hidden behind a thin veil of greyish clouds, which reluctantly dropped lazy snowflakes on the ground. Stephen seemed jovial as he led Wirt towards an old stone bridge over the river, no doubt enjoying his bit of adventuring. His companion must have seemed utterly dejected and lost in his various unpleasant thoughts, because at some point the younger boy said:

"She thought of you often, you know."

"Uh?" said Wirt, unsure of what he heard.

"Beatrice," clarified Stephen. "We were pretty close, she was fun to be around, so we talked sometimes. She missed you and your brother."

"The two of us, then?" Wirt blurted without thinking. "I mean…" He felt considerable discomfort despite the fact Stephen must have been some five years younger than him. "Well…"

"I guess one of the reasons she wanted to leave was to see you again. To see if there's a way, you know?"

They reached the bridge, and Stephen leaned precariously on the old stone railing to throw a snowball at the piece of tree bark floating in the river.

"Oh well," said Wirt eventually. "Ever heard of the word 'irony'"?

"Nah," Stephen shook his head and then grinned widely. "I grew up with Beatrice, remember? We went straight to 'sarcasm'!"

The two boys laughed as they continued their journey, and, despite the fact his brother was still all alone somewhere on the other side of the hill, his parents must have been going sick with worry and Beatrice was probably getting further and further away from him with each passing minute, Wirt felt something warm stirring inside him again.


	8. Chapter 8: Llewellyn's Gift

Greg ran as fast as he could, which was faster than he and especially his P.E. teacher Mr. Goldbloom had thought possible before his meeting with Monsieur Renard. He ploughed through the snow, up hill and down dale, breathing like a scared little animal that he was at the moment, for once desperately wishing his useless older half-brother was there, if only to keep him company in this expeditious retreat. Or maybe even his parents, even though those two would probably keep talking about therapy even as the horrendous nightmare of a fox ate their son bit by bit. Greg reminded himself that Monsieur Renard needed him alive, but that only made his tired short legs move even faster.

He had no idea where he was going, for his brain was locked in the "flight, definitely flight" mode and the only direction he knew and needed was best defined as "away from the Fox". He couldn't even properly worry about the Owl's well-being, although he did spare the brave bird a few grateful thoughts every now and then before returning to the more vital matter of his own survival.

After some time, which to his muddled brain might have been anything between ten minutes and an hour, Greg finally ran out of breath in a quiet shaded dell and leaned against an aspen, listening hard but too afraid to turn around and see if he was actually being followed. Something moved inside his breast pocket, and he twitched, having completely forgotten about poor old Jason Funderburker.

"At least I have you," he mused, gingerly picking the frog up and giving it a few strokes on the head with shaking mittened hands. "Tell you what, Jason Funderburker, I sorta miss the Beast now that I've met that new fellow."

The frog croaked warily.

"Oh, of course you're right, I'm only saying this because the Beast is not around anymore… Let's move on, then, or we might share his fate!"

Greg tried to break into a run again but had to stop and put a hand into his side pocket, so that he could cup his aching spleen. He had a brief desire to just stand and cry for a while, but eventually decided he couldn't afford losing Jason Funderburker's respect and, more importantly, be conscripted by an evil fox – he didn't doubt, however, that Wirt would have totally given up at this stage. The strange need to prove a dubious point to the absent brother inspired Greg to adopt some form of race walking – in his books, a kind of sport for people who tried their best not to look like they cared very much but at the end of the day still wanted to lay their hands on an Olympic medal.

As he moved further and further into the seemingly neverending forest where the spring was but a distant rumour, his fear of Monsieur Renard was slowly assuaged, making way for such mundane but intrusive concerns as weariness and hunger. He tried to talk to the few birds and squirrels he saw and once even contemplated hitting one of them with a snowball, hoping for a curse which would have probably come handy in the circumstances. However, when Greg saw a small white rabbit rushing towards him through the snow, he had no chance to address it because the animal spoke first, and its tone was rather urgent:

"Finally! You! Phew! Thought I'd never find you!"

The voice was male, thin and just about as rabbity as Greg imagined these animals would speak.

"Um-m-m…" The boy took a cautious step back, weighing the stone-hard snowball in his hand. "Don't come any closer, I'm armed to the teeth! And they're not milk anymore!"

The rabbit rose on its hind legs and tilted his head to one side, staring at Greg with his red albino eyes.

"Come on, Gregory, I'm on your side!" he pleaded. "I know everything that happened with you and Blodie and Renard! I'm here to take you to a safe place!"

"Oh, you would say that, wouldn't you?" snorted Greg, pretty angry at his inability to trust anyone anymore. "What if you're the Fox's agent?"

"Agent? Me? A rabbit?" uttered the animal. "I'm a Guardian! Blodie sent me! The owl! She's wounded! Look at me! I'm just a harmless bunny!"

He seemed pretty harmless indeed, and he knew the Owl by name – which, Greg admitted, wasn't much of a proof not least because they were never formally introduced – but in his current state the boy was prone to paranoia.

"Unless it's a bluff!" he exclaimed. "And I know a lot about bluff, Jason Funderburker is awfully good at it. You can't read him, it's like he doesn't even know which cards he's got when we're playing poker."

"Why, why on Earth would I bluff?" moaned the rabbit and twitched its long ears. "Blodie chased Renard away but was wounded so badly! There's no telling when he comes back – and _he_ always comes back! And you laid out such a clear trail for him that he will have no trouble at all finding you once he recovers!"

The rabbit accusingly pointed behind Greg's back with a paw and, even though it was the oldest trick in the book, the boy turned his head. His heart fell as he saw a glaringly obvious line of deep footsteps in the snow, which must have stretched all the way back to the thicket where the battle took place. It seemed that his whole school class travelled through there, not just Greg alone. He turned back, belatedly fearing for his safety, but was immediately relieved, for the rabbit patiently stood in place. Greg squinted his eyes, giving the animal his best Clint Eastwood glare.

"Okay, let's go," he slowly said at last, deducing that if he stayed, the Fox would find him anyway. And besides, what's left to do if you can't even trust talking bunnies anymore?

"Follow me!" waved the rabbit, jumping on the spot excitedly and then turning back to the direction he came from. "First we cover our tracks, then – straight to Llewellyn's Gift!"

This time Greg didn't have to be nudged, for he had no desire to build snowmen, play snowballs or waste time any other way which might have or might have not involved snow. He set out after the rabbit in a grim, determined pace, listening to his rumbling stomach and his grumbling frog singing in unison. Somehow, his last adventure in the Unknown seemed a lot less taxing right now. Was it because Wirt and Beatrice had been with him? Or did it just feel different because that had been his first ever time in the Unknown, and nothing could match that feeling of discovery anymore?

The rabbit, true to his word, did his best to make sure the Fox would have trouble following them. Once they reached a small frozen stream, he made Greg move onto the ice and slide along the bank for several minutes, which was when they got to a huge fallen tree, its thick dead roots trapped underneath the ice as if an unfortunate river octopus had decided to grab the log to pull it under and had missed the onset of winter. Then Greg had to climb upon the uprooted tree without touching the ground and crawl down its entire length, minding the broken branches. Seemingly satisfied with this diversion, the rabbit nevertheless made the boy strew his steps with snow for some more time after they left the tree behind.

"Are there more Guardians in that… Gift of yours?" asked Greg as they were coming down a gentle slope peppered with grey rocks – purulent pimples on the snow-white face.

"Most of us are quite busy taking care of the others like Renard," said the rabbit. "There are lots of them around these days, lots! We're stretched thin, trying to distract and deflect and divert, but they are strong, and we are too few…"

Greg regretted asking that question: he had felt a lot more comfortable imagining the Guardians as some mighty, unyielding host of honourable protectors in shining armour rather than a few miserable animals outweighed by the mysterious dark forces. It was a lot like physics, he thought. You ask how stuff works, expecting something wonderful, and all you get is maths upon maths with a sprinkle of chemistry if you're particularly unlucky.

At last they reached the final point of their destination, even though at first it seemed to Greg just like any other dell they had passed on their way through the woods. The only landmark was the huge misshapen rock about twelve feet high, half-covered in snow, and the rabbit ran straight towards it, dug something up from the ground with his front paws and pulled, making an inconspicuous slab of stone move aside to reveal a small dark opening. Greg, who just a day ago would have pushed the rabbit out of the way to fly inside and explore as soon as possible, once again felt unfamiliar reluctance and suspicion.

"Oh, come on!" urged the animal. "Have you followed me all the way just to stop trusting me here?"

He looked a bit offended, even though Greg had no previous experience determining the finer points of rabbit mimicry, so the boy sighed and realised he hardly had any other options but to climb in.

The first thing he saw after crawling down the twisting passageway was the Owl, which finally made him inwardly sigh with relief. His heartbeat sped up once again, however, once he saw the condition the bird was in: battered, barely breathing, with her feathers ruffled and partially broken or lost, unconscious on the makeshift bed by the wooden wall of the warm cozy room. It was tended by a white-haired bearded man in a dark green robe, who was somehow even shorter than Greg. The dwarf looked up, studying the boy with his blue eyes shining with intelligence.

"You must be Gregory," he mumbled, losing much of the interest the moment he voiced that conclusion. "Were you followed?" he asked the rabbit before returning his full attention back to the Owl.

"No, no, we were careful. How is she?"

"Holding on…" the dwarf drawled, which to Greg sounded like he didn't believe it would stay that way for long. A sharp tooth of guilt pierced his heart and seemed to settle there.

He approached the bed and looked at the bird with concern: she, who looked so proud and majestic just a few hours ago, was now reduced to this immobile heap of feathers and bloody bandages.

"I hate that fox," he grumbled, feeling unwanted tears build up in the corners of his eyes.

The rabbit hopped on the bedsheet at the foot of the bed for a better vantage point.

"Another Guardian brought her here to Snorri before flying off to search for your brother again," he explained. "Don't blame yourself! Neither of you could have known this would happen!"

"Well, _I_ definitely warned her," interjected the dwarf, for whom the natural manner of speaking was almost incomprehensible mumbling at his beard, which reminded Greg of his late grandfather. Snorri moved across to the table in the corner of the room and brought back some balm which he then started to apply to the Owl's barely moving chest.

"Oh, give it a rest, Snorri!"

"No word about Wirt, then?" asked Greg quickly. He liked the current state of affairs less and less. It was ridiculously difficult to keep in mind so many reasons for worrying and juggle them like an adult probably does on a daily basis. Who was to say Wirt hadn't been captured already or maybe even killed after he inevitably had done the bidding of some sorcerous maniac like Monsieur Renard? He sniffled and then inwardly screamed at himself to stop being so girly, which was harder to do with each passing moment.

"I'm afraid not," Snorri replied. "We can't really organise a proper search party, and our scouts haven't found anything at the other side of the Riddler's Vein so far. And now that Blodie is down, I'll have to recall one of them, at least…"

"Stop talking about her as if she's not right here, as if she's not dying before your very eyes!" cried the rabbit, perfectly expressing the sentiment that Greg felt but couldn't bring himself to say in front of this unfamiliar grumpy dwarf.

"Yes, can't we do something?" the boy said. "To help her?"

"I'm doing everything in my power, and since I'm the Loremaster of the Guardians, my power is not of a modest kind," retorted Snorri testily. "And yet, I'm afraid, even that might not be enough in the end…"

Greg stomped his foot, angry at himself, the Fox and the useless dwarf. The rabbit gave him a sympathetic look which only made things worse. What was the point of returning to the Unknown if he only brought death and danger and felt even more lonely and helpless?

"But there's so much magic in your world!" he cried. "Surely at least something should do the trick?"

Before answering, the dwarf scratched his long white beard, staining it with yellowish drops of the balm off the tips of his fingers.

"Maybe Adelaide could help her. She is an old wise witch – of dubious moral standards, granted, but she's been around for a while and knows a lot of ways to trick death."

"Ugh, she doesn't, really," mumbled Greg, feeling his heavy heart sink even deeper. "She's pretty terrible at tricking death, if you ask me. Personal experience," he explained when he saw the questioning looks.

"Then, I'm afraid… well… I can't think of any way at all to help her. All we have to do now is… hope for a miracle," concluded the dwarf, lowering his voice, which sounded like a sentence of the jury.

"There's always the Cauldron," blurted the rabbit and then turned away twitching his ears nervously, as if he swore in front of a little kid or something to that effect.

"No. Absolutely not," Snorri replied sternly.

"What? Which Cauldron? Tell me!" demanded Greg, towering over the dwarf. It felt good to tower over someone for a change, even if only by a few inches.

Snorri sighed and shuffled back towards the table to put the balm away in the old-fashioned wooden cabinet on the wall.

"It should be of no concern to you, boy."

"Well, the Owl – Blodie – risked her life to save me and might well lose it now!" he cried. "Of course it concerns me!"

"The thing is…" the rabbit shyly interjected, "it sort of has to do with the very thing we're trying to prevent."

"Meaning what exactly?" Greg put his arms akimbo.

The dwarf gave the boy a long hard look before explaining.

"Among the treasures of the Beasts there is rumoured to be the legendary Cauldron of Rebirth, which restores life to the body, providing the flame of the soul remains within it."

"Then _what are we waiting for, exactly_?!" Greg nearly jumped up in frustration. "Come on! I'm corrupted by the Beast, apparently! I can get it out and then we can save her!"

The dwarf, judging by the intense frown that twisted his already wrinkled face, was having none of it.

"That," he pointed his finger upwards in the oh-so-familiar manner of Greg's Grandpa, "is _everything_ the Guardians stand against! We cannot possibly risk the demise of this whole land for a single life of any of us, and believe me, boy, Blodie would have said exactly the same if she could talk now."

"You can't know that, she's terribly boring but not suicidal," Greg waved him off. "And what's the risk exactly? All those sorcerer guys are hunting me and Wirt, they can hardly expect us to show up at the very place you forbid us to go to!"

"Yeah," the rabbit stuck his oar in. "Snorri, weren't you going to propose to get to the Beast's treasures anyway at some point, so that we could destroy them once and for all and chase all the seekers away?"

"That was before I knew Renard was involved in all this! You just can't trust that cunning creature, you can expect anything from him…"

"Well, the boys can't hide forever, and besides, there are others who were touched by the Beast – remember that Woodsman's daughter?" the rabbit asked. "Can you be sure the old man would hide her well?"

"Come on, Mr. Snorri!" pleaded Greg. "You know we're right! You know we have a chance!"

The dwarf gave a deep sigh of exasperation and turned away from the boy, but in doing so he had to face the Owl, helpless and dying despite all the Guardians' efforts, dying for their very cause. He harrumphed and crossed his arms, avoiding everyone's eyes.

"Well, I suppose we three can probably, just _probably_ get to the Valley of Empty Song unnoticed from here…" he reluctantly said at last. "But there has to be a very careful planning done, and I'll have to contact a few other Guardians to meet us there and help us, and this is a terribly, terribly reckless thing to do and I am _not_ accepting any responsibility because…"

On and on Snorri went, making all sorts of excuses and probably still trying to justify this decision to himself, but Greg didn't mind and just wanted to hug the dwarf fiercely, for there turned out to be a heart of gold under all that grumpy façade after all, just like in his late grandfather's case, and that made the boy think about Charlie's words once again, and also made him feel like there might be some good in the world after all.


	9. Chapter 9: The Dark Lantern

By the time Wirt and Stephen reached the old inn, twilight had already bloomed over the Unknown. "The Pilgrim's Rest" stood at the side of the wide forest path they had been following for a while. The warm light in its windows and a steady column of smoke rising from its chimney was a welcome sight in the rapidly thickening darkness engulfing the woods.

Wirt recalled the last time he'd been here. It was pouring cats and dogs, they unwillingly stole Fred the talking horse, mistook the Woodsman for the Beast and, worst of all, he had to sing in public, goaded by the patrons obsessed with narrative archetypes. Still, he would gladly perform the cheesiest love songs known to humanity if only that made Greg appear by his side.

"Well, I guess that's it," Wirt turned to Stephen, slowing his pace to a halt.

"Are you sure?" The younger boy looked disappointed. "You still need to find a guide there and someone has to show you around the place and…"

"I'm sure I can manage," Wirt tried to smile kindly. He had a lot of experience ordering his own younger brother around, but somehow found himself lacking confidence when it came to dealing with another kid.

"But I thought maybe I could follow you for a bit and…"

"Stephen. Please go home. Your mother is worrying sick because of Beatrice, and I'm already drowning in guilt as it is, there's no need to push my head further under the water."

"Oh well."

The red-headed boy shrugged and shook Wirt's hand solemnly. Before disappearing around the bend in the forest path, he turned and exclaimed, "But someday we have to go on an adventure together!"

"Sure," Wirt agreed loudly and then, turning towards the inn's door, muttered under his breath, "if I survive this one, that is."

It was a quiet evening in "The Pilgrim's Rest". The atmosphere was somewhat subdued, the musicians were absent, and the patrons eyed him in silent suspicion before returning to their meals or mugs. Even the huge lazy dog dozing by the fire took time out of its busy schedule to show Wirt its teeth. Perhaps "the creeps stalking the land" which Mrs. Porter had mentioned were the reason the inn wasn't quite as jovial as Wirt remembered.

"Welcome, young man," greeted him the plump innkeeper, a broom in her hand. "How may I help you? A hot meal or a room for the night?"

"Neither, actually." Wirt glanced around the common room, trying to decide which of the patrons resembled a guide or anything like that. He didn't quite have a stereotypical guide image in his mind, that was the problem. It could be anyone on the spectrum between Indiana Jones and a tramp. "I was hoping to find someone who could lead me to, er, Riddler's Vein or whatever, without attracting… you know," Wirt lowered his voice, not sure if mentioning him was just as unwelcome as referring to the Beast in polite society, "the Hunter."

"Ah, feeling out of place, then? Not sure if you belong?"

The tone of the innkeeper's voice was supposed to be sympathetic but, frankly, hearing the words themselves didn't help. Wirt nodded with what he hoped was a nonchalant shrug.

"Well, may I rot in seven hells if the _verdammt_ fiend gets another poor soul."

Wirt jumped at the unexpected voice right behind his back. Regaining whatever remained of his composure, he turned around and saw a gentleman in a dark blue coat towering above him. A rather garish yellow scarf was wrapped tightly around his neck and chin in multiple coils. There was something vaguely off-putting about the gentleman, and not just the fact he had crept up on Wirt and startled him.

"Er, good evening."

"Couldn't help but overhear your words, my _junger Herr_."

"You really could," blurted Wirt, noticing that it was at least twenty paces to the nearest table from where they stood. "Uh, sorry."

"Ah, but my ears are very keen. They have to be, to avoid the Hunter's _verdammt Hunds_ so often."

"Oh, okay."

The intense stare of the tall gentleman was quite unnerving. With his peripheral vision Wirt noticed that the innkeeper had left him to fend for himself and was sweeping the floor around the bar.

"So… are you a guide?"

"I've been known to be one, _ja_ ," the gentleman said cryptically and flashed a wide smile. A corner of Wirt's lips moved upwards neurotically at the sight of it. He still couldn't quite put a finger on what seemed so weird about the man.

"Well, that's a helpful coincidence."

"Which is why I took the liberty to introduce myself," the gentleman nodded. "Although, of course, I hadn't really. Please do forgive my manners. Herr Reineke, at your service."

He bowed almost as low as the floor. It was impressive and Wirt felt strangely compelled to perform a curtsy-like movement in return, which he thought fell quite short of the mark.

"Er, name's Wirt," he said.

"I can take you to Riddler's Vein, Herr Wirt, and the old fool and his rabid pack won't catch a single sniff of you. Know that everything I've told you so far is absolute truth, and I am known to be wary of that substance."

So, basically, Herr Reineke had just admitted he was a blatant liar. That shouldn't have inspired any confidence in Wirt, and yet he felt more and more confused rather that repelled. Who would admit to being a liar after proclaiming he'd only spoken truth? Or was the admittance that he was a liar itself a lie, for it came after Herr Reineke swore everything he had said was true? Wouldn't that make him…? Wirt's head was spinning a bit as he was losing himself in this maze of unwanted paradoxes. He didn't want any of that. He only wanted to find his brother again.

He looked once more at the strange gentleman, who didn't seem to mind waiting for his belated reply.

"You're a crook, aren't you?" he asked bluntly.

"In fact I am, _ja_! _Mein Gott_ , this honesty thing is so… liberating," mused Herr Reineke, thoughtfully rubbing his chin through the scarf.

"Well, if you're planning to rob me, I can save us both a lot of time. As you can see, I am broke," said Wirt and turned his pockets inside out. He was surprised to hear something falling out of them on the floor and rolling away from him. Herr Reineke deftly stomped it with the sole of his boot and picked it up. Soon Wirt saw that he was examining the silver penny Charlie Acorn had given him.

"Oh, apart from that. You can keep it, actually. As a payment for future service."

"You are too kind," with a shrug Herr Reineke dropped the coin into a side pocket of his coat. "I was not going to rob you, however."

"Well, better safe than sorry."

"Tricking the Hunter is of a sporting interest to me, you see," said Herr Reineke. "And I was heading towards the Vein anyway, so taking you along won't be an inconvenience to me, not in the slightest. What is it that beckons you to the other side of the hill, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Family matters," Wirt replied. "And you?"

"Business," grinned Herr Reineke. "Alas, always business. So, if you aren't planning to stay for a hot meal or some other refreshment, perhaps we should go, _ja_?"

Wirt gave it all one more thought. Sure, the man didn't seem to be an example of outstanding moral behaviour, but at least he was honest enough to admit it, right? The Unknown was full of these lovable cranks, after all – Auntie Whispers hadn't seemed so bad at the end of the day, and even Adelaide, truth be told, had been a relatively harmless old lady who needed someone to take care of her, even though it wouldn't have hurt her to take a look at international labour laws. Or take the Woodsman, whom they had mistaken for a bad guy near this very inn. Surely Wirt wasn't going to step on the same rake twice, especially since Gregory needed to be found as soon as possible?

 _Can't remember ever being so fond of inner conversations_ , Wirt mused. _It really feels like there's another voice talking to me in my head. Must be all this stress._

"Sure, lead the way," he finally said.

As they were leaving the inn through the front door, they bumped into the familiar masked figure dressed like a fat red gnome.

"I'm the Highwa… Oh, sweet mother of all that is holy!" he gasped after just one glance at Herr Reineke, shouldered past them into the inn, slammed the door and, judging by the noise, barred it with the dog.

"What was that all about?" Wirt frowned.

"It takes a crook to know a crook," smiled his companion and patted him on the shoulder. "Don't you worry, _junger Herr_."

To his utmost surprise, Wirt found that he didn't.

The darkness embraced them as they walked away from "The Pilgrim's Rest" and its single lantern restlessly swaying in the wind. Herr Reineke took Wirt down the forest paths which didn't seem to exist at first: just a slightly wider space between two tall trees leading to another opening and then to yet another one, until at last it was obvious they were on some hidden trail. The man hummed a catchy ditty, his hands deep inside his coat's pockets. He seemed to be enjoying the night.

Wirt, on the other hand, felt groggy and unsure as he followed his guide, as if he had had a few mugs of ale back in the inn without remembering it. The wind was much colder at this late hour, and the snow under his feet seemed a lot more reluctant to give way. Every step, however, was taking him closer to Greg, which was enough to keep him vaguely optimistic.

Time wrapped itself around the dark woods, stretching and shrinking, evading any possible calculation. It might have been ten minutes or two hours into their journey when Herr Reineke motioned for Wirt to stop by raising his hand up.

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" said Wirt and then added, "No," as if his question wasn't already the answer.

"I might have heard the hounds of the Hunter. Can't be sure. Follow me!" he ordered in urgent whisper and, half-crouching, turned left to disappear between the pines. Wirt obliged, nervously looking around and straining his ears.

Soon they reached a hillock dominated by a humongous, sprawling ash tree, its trunk so massive the whole Porter family could gather around holding each other's hands, and they would still barely complete the circle. Something stroke Wirt as odd about the tree as he was sneaking towards it on Herr Reineke's heels. Only when he reached the trunk and rested his back against it did he realise what it was. The tree was full of strong green leaves, even if covered in snow. He was pretty sure it wasn't normal ash behaviour in wintertime.

Pondering about it at length proved impossible because his guide, who had been staring into the darkness beyond the tree for a while, turned towards him with an alarmed expression.

"Climb up, _junger Herr_."

"Are… are they near?" stammered Wirt, feeling his heart somewhere around his throat.

"Can't say for sure. Climb up!"

And he locked his hands to give the boy a hoist to the lowest branch. Once they were a dozen feet above the ground, Herr Reineke gestured for him to stay quiet. Wirt swallowed a lump. The silence of the woods felt even more oppressive because of the danger lurking somewhere beyond his hearing.

"It is imperative that you stay silent," Herr Reineke whispered to his ear. His breath smelled of eggs and bacon.

Wirt nodded. Then his guide procured a thick rope from inside his coat's inner pockets and motioned for the boy to tie it around his own feet. Wirt threw him a baffled glance but Herr Reineke just put a finger to his lips and pushed the coil into his trembling hands. Having completed the task, Wirt found out that next he had to tie another end around the thick branch they were sitting on. It didn't seem particularly odd to him. After all, Herr Reineke must have been familiar the most advanced tactics when it came to evading the Hunter's hounds.

"What now?" Wirt asked with his lips.

His guide crawled closer and inspected both knots with gloved hands, giving the rope a few experimental tugs. He showed Wirt two thumbs up, seemingly pleased with the effort. The boy found himself blushing a little.

Then Herr Reineke shrugged, somewhat apologetically, and pushed him off the tree.

The white ground and the black sky swapped places before Wirt's eyes. The blood surged to his head in a mad rush. He felt nauseous and didn't dare open his mouth to scream lest he puked all of his insides. Like a pendulum he was swinging back and forth some way above the ground, drowning in cold sweat and trying to rationalise his behaviour since the moment he had met Herr Reineke in "The Pilgrim's Rest". It would have been a daunting task even if he hadn't been hanging upside down. After all, it took him all this time to finally realise that Herr Reineke was an upright-walking fox.

"What is even the point of being a trickster," the Fox sighed, rather melancholically, after descending from the tree and leaning against the trunk, "what is the point of complex overwrought plans if certain people are so weak-minded you can basically tell them what to do, and they'll do it?"

Wirt had no answer to that. He was busy hating himself and trying not to puke. He did try to put up a fight when Herr Reineke approached to tie up his hands together, but it was no use against the confident strength of the scoundrel.

"Your brother proves to be a much tougher fish to catch," offered the Fox casually.

"What have you done to Greg?" croaked Wirt and, sure enough, he puked. The bilious vomit poured both out of his mouth and his nose. It was far from pleasant and didn't help his self-esteem much. It didn't even catch Herr Reineke who deftly stepped away a moment before.

"Oh, dear. Please do be careful." The Fox almost gently wiped his face with a handkerchief which he then threw away with disgust. "You're my back-up plan, after all. Can't risk smuggling you across the Vein right now, what with all the puny competitors of mine supposedly waiting to have a bite of the pie, but it wouldn't hurt to know I have you safe and secure should something terrible befall to Gregory, would it?"

"What are you even talking about? Who are you? Where's Greg?" demanded Wirt, but the Fox only pushed him away to swing on the rope with a replenished velocity.

"I've already told you my name. And everything I told you, like I said, was true. I made a little bet with myself, you see. Just to prove that this honesty thing is quite as overrated as I've always imagined. I didn't expect to lose. But then again," he shrugged and grinned maniacally, "I bet against myself, so I still won, didn't I? I kinda… tend to."

With that, Herr Reineke gave a whooping laugh which surely must have reached the furthest corners of the Unknown, and left Wirt to hang upside down on a rope tied to an immense ash tree in the middle of a cold dark forest.


	10. Chapter 10: The Tree

Wirt lost his voice right after losing his dignity, screaming for help until every word was chafing his throat like an iron nail. The freezing wind ruling over the Unknown at night-time wormed through his exposed head and crawled deep inside his lungs each time he opened his mouth, which he had to do in order to breathe, for his nose was busy producing endless streams of snot. Wirt couldn't feel his ears anymore and assumed they had fallen off. The mad Fox couldn't possibly expect him to survive here. If a cerebral haemorrhage didn't take his life, then surely the cruel wind would. Dying of thirst or hunger seemed almost optimistic in comparison.

Wirt hung – in peace, unless another frantic attempt to free his hands set him swaying, but when the impulse eventually died, the dull immobility gnawed at his consciousness until he jerked his body once more. Tears – of silent helplessness, of rage, of fear – rolled down his temples and left a salty trail as his hair soaked them up.

The more he hung, the more inevitable Greg's demise seemed to him. It took Wirt all that remained of his resolve not to think of his younger brother as already dead. That was how the Fox got to you, he thought whenever the ability to think straight returned to him. That's definitely how he got to Wirt himself. Mind games with a hint of… magic, probably. The fact that the mind in question was a feeble and an easily impressed one certainly had helped Herr Reineke back at the inn. Perhaps this was what Wirt deserved after all, for being such a lousy brother and a useless man to boot.

At some point of his ordeal he started seeing things which clearly weren't there, which, until he could no longer tell what actually _should_ have been there, he treated as a sure sign of his death crawling even closer. First Wirt heard an eagle cry somewhere below – or "above", if you ask the eagle – and then he thought he saw it perched on the branch his rope was tied to, spreading its majestic wings. The most curious thing about the eagle was that there seemed to be another bird sitting upon his beak. After seeing that, Wirt closed his eyes and refused to open them until the vision ran its course and a semblance of sanity returned to him.

Some time passed – could be days for all he knew, although the grasp of darkness remained strong – and the next hallucination descended on his muddled consciousness. This time it came from the ground, near the trunk of the tree where Wirt had the misfortune to look. Thick roots spread apart to reveal a massive head of what could only be a dragon. It stared at Wirt for some time without even a hint of blinking, huge balls of molten gold with a speck of obsidian in the middle, and the boy couldn't turn away from that gaze nor even close his tired, weeping eyes. The dragon snapped one of the roots, taking a bite from the middle, and the noise was so loud that Wirt involuntarily jerked away on his rope. When he focused his eyes on the tangle of roots once more, there was no sign of the wyrm's head, only a tiny squirrel digging for nonexistent nuts at the base of the tree.

But that wasn't the worst vision the tree had in store for Wirt. The next was a cruel one as well as vivid, for it aimed at the last nugget of hope tucked deep inside his bleeding heart. First came the lazy greeting of the dawn which the tree seemed to paint across the sky with its canopy of green branches moving as one in the wind. Each time Wirt dared open his eyes, it seemed a shade paler, brighter than before, but he knew the tree was only teasing him, and he was trapped in the dead of night for good.

Then he thought he felt soft fingers sliding across his cheeks, heard a ghostly voice trying to reach his frozen ears from a thousand miles away. He tried to lift his eyelids – they were heavier than any burden on his heart. His eyes refused to focus, and when they did, Wirt didn't believe them. Even hanging upside down he recognised that freckled face he had only seen once an eternity ago. He felt a spike being driven into the very middle of his soul, and he wept bitterly, snapping his eyes shut and hoping the tears would burn the painful image off his tormented mind.

An illusion of a spring's breath brushed against his nostrils, and then the thaw touched a corner of his chapped lips for a few precious moments. The teasing hallucination went away before he had a chance to lose himself in it. And once more there was wind, and cold, and the taut rope on which he slowly swayed below a monstrous tree.

And then it snapped and he fell down in the snow with a croaky moan, the veil of fatigue wrapping him so tight that he lost consciousness before even realising something had happened.

* * *

Wirt woke up to a pleasant smell of smoke tickling his nostrils. He felt blissfully warm and wanted to sleep for another eternity. He lazily lifted one eyelid, saw a merry little fire a few feet away from his face and, fully content with this particular dream, closed his eye again, mumbling something grateful into the pillow. The pillow moved under his face, and, startled, he would have jumped up if only his aching body had let him. Instead he fell face down in the snow before clambering up, flashes of pain in every joint.

"Hey! Calm down, sleepyhead, you'll burn yourself!"

Wirt looked up in confusion and found himself face to face with his latest hallucination sitting cross-legged on the tartan blanket. Her concerned face seemed gaunter than he remembered, and the freckles dotting her skin were much paler. Her unruly mane the colour of burnt orange was cut down to manageable length and now barely reached her shoulders. The blue dress that the feathers had turned into once Wirt had cut off the wings made way for a thin dark green coat and a grey cloak fastened with a silver brooch. And yet it was undeniably Beatrice, and there was an uncertain wry smile on her face, which he caught and copied without even realising it.

"You?" he breathed, still feeling spikes all over the surface of his throat.

"Of course it's me, who else would bother saving your sorry backside?" Beatrice rolled her eyes before brushing off the snow from his face.

"But… how?"

Wirt pushed his reluctant body onto the blanket next to the girl, unable to take his eyes off her.

"The fastest stallion in all the realm took her like a wind through plains and woods and rivers and snows!" announced another familiar voice, and Wirt turned around to see Fred the talking horse grinning at him across the fire.

"I rode this lazy nag here, yes," translated Beatrice with a sigh. "You see, we were heading north pursuing adventures when the birds I'd met back when I was cursed told me about your arrival. Fancy that for a sign! Of course I didn't believe those chattering idiots at first, but what could I do – just dismiss it and ride on? So we turned back, and got here late last night, and what do you think the birds told me then? That you," she pointed an accusatory finger at Wirt, "showing no more awareness than my four-year-old sister Frances, let the Fox twist you round his little finger and leave you hanging here like a leg of ham!"

"I was tired and had to find Gregory," retorted Wirt, instinctively crossing his arms in defence. "And that psychopath is way more convincing than he should be. Who is he? And do those birds of yours know where my brother is?"

"No-one knows who that Fox is," Beatrice lowered her voice. "He came from far away, sniffing out the Beast's treasures just like the rest of them, so they all say."

"Rest of whom? Who says? What treasures?"

"I'll explain on our way, else you'll never run out of questions. I had to give you a couple of hours' sleep but we can't afford to waste any more time if we want to get to Greg before Reinaert does."

"Reineke," corrected Wirt for the sake of the argument, just like in the good old days.

"He has many names, none of which are probably true." Beatrice frowned. "Nothing about him is what it seems. Get up, brave traveller. I know it wasn't pleasant hanging there, but that tree would never let any true harm befall you, as far as I'm aware. It could and did play with your mind, though." She turned to her left to look at the giant ash looming some distance away from them. "It's older than anything in the Unknown, I've heard. I guess it gets boring after a while."

"It sure does," hinted Fred, beating his hoof impatiently.

While Beatrice was putting out the fire and rolling up the tartan blanket, Wirt stood up and tried to regain control over his body. Apparently what she said was true, for there weren't any signs of hypothermia or notable physical pain apart from some discomfort which could be explained by simple fatigue. He felt light-headed and a little dizzy, but rubbing a handful of snow against his face seemed to help. He stole a glance at Beatrice, admiring yet confused. Were those really her touches at dawn, or did she come much later after the hallucination had ran its course?

 _Did she really kiss me or was that another trick of yours?_ he thought morosely, looking at the tree. It swayed its branches in the wind which could have been both "yes" and "no". "Yes" what and "no" what, anyway?

It took Wirt another handful of snow spread across his face to throw all these questions out of his head and concentrate on getting to Greg before the Fox did. After all, Beatrice was by his side again, and that was brilliant in itself regardless of whether or not she might have been harbouring certain feelings for him, which wasn't to say that…

A snowball to the back of the head cut his thinking short.

"Come on, lazybones!" called Beatrice, already astride Fred. "I've got too many siblings of my own to care about yours as well!"

Early morning sun was hiding behind her, gently brushing her wild red hair with its radiant fingers. Some small bluebird must have been trapped in Wirt's heart, for when he looked at her it was fluttering madly, uncomfortable in the limited space within his chest.

"I missed you," he uttered without thinking.

Her big green eyes found his and smiled.

"I missed you, too, you big moper. Now hop on."

Wirt happily obliged, and after a few mishaps he was sitting behind her on Fred's back, which the owner of the back wasn't entirely happy with.

"Can't he walk?" complained the ex-tea horse. Wirt made a note to find out why exactly he wasn't a tea horse anymore and did it or did it not have something to do with stealing.

"He just spent the night hanging upside down from that tree, if you forgot!" Beatrice lightly drummed her fingers on the crown of Fred's head.

"Okay. Can't _you_ walk? Or fly, whatever floats your boat. Or float, indeed."

"Fred, drop the act. You're stronger than you look."

"Than I _look_? Oh, thanks a lot! Just what any young stallion wants to hear."

"We need to get to the other side of the Vein, and fast," Beatrice went on. She didn't seem to care much about wounded equine pride. "You know it perfectly well. Come on, let's go already!"

The horse snorted and puffed, but eventually complied and started off at a walk, soon speeding up to an uncertain trot. Wirt was bouncing up and down, not sure where he was supposed to put his hands, until Beatrice reached behind her back, took them and placed them on her waist.

"Oh, okay," blurted Wirt nonchalantly, his mind aflame. "So… Do you know how to avoid that notorious Hunter, then? Or is he just another trick of the Fox?"

"Oh, no, he's real enough, and we aren't going to avoid him," replied Beatrice, urging Fred to go even faster. "We're going to look for him."


	11. Chapter 11: The Valley of Empty Song

Greg could tell they entered the closest thing to a home the Beast had ever had even without Snorri the dwarf tugging at his sleeve to announce it. The noon sun wrapped several cloudy blindfolds around its yellow eye to avoid looking down. The unintrusive but everpresent noise of the forest died out as they stepped inside the gloomy edelwood grove: Snorri pushed the cart with bone skis at the bottom, inside which the rabbit was a trembling ball of white fur next to the magic chest of the Guardians, and Greg trudged through knee-deep snow just behind him, ogling the surroundings with wide eyes. One could easily see how the Valley of Empty Song got its name. Open your mouth to sing, and the melody would listlessly spiral down to the ground, deflated and defeated. Jason Funderburker seemed to have sensed it – he was quieter than usual in Greg's pocket. No hope, no joy could survive there, for the winter's reign was eternal where the Beast had once taken up his abode.

Shadowy memories descended like hungry ghosts from the bare looming treetops to gnaw at Greg. His brother in the deadly embrace of an edelwood. Greg himself, tricked by the Beast, alone in the snows, and not a single star in the darkness above him. The false promise of warmth as the branches caress you, claw at your skin, tickle you with their sparse leaves. Greg shuddered as a particularly vivid memory found its way inside his mind, and concentrated on the task ahead.

The magic chest, according to Snorri, would hold anything one might put inside, as long as it was fed enough moonlight every night. The plan was to get into the Valley unseen, pack everything in the chest, get out unseen, save Blodie back at Llewellyn's Gift and, with the help of other Guardians, take the artefacts to a safe place or somewhere else to destroy them. Even though he was a Loremaster, Snorri was quite vague about that last stage as if he wasn't entirely sure about a safe enough place himself. Then again, the abruptness with which the plan went into motion when Greg had arrived must have unnerved the little man to no end.

"Do you think they're here? The other Guardians?" whispered Greg as they were slowly exploring the desolate valley: all snows and trees and not a single hint of spring. The silence around them was palpable, but in a way you wouldn't want to touch it, lest it exploded with pus all over your face. "Do you think they found my brother?"

"Pray that the warlocks and witches aren't here," retorted the dwarf, grumpy as ever. "I told you how thin we're spread. This whole affair is ridiculously careless. There's no telling if my yesterday's messages even reached them…"

They sent the rabbit out to scout ahead. Snorri wouldn't say it out loud, but Greg suspected he didn't know where exactly the Beast had put his treasures. Soon the fleet-footed creature returned, reporting that the coast was clear and not a single soul was in sight. Greg would have preferred that no-one had mentioned souls or the lack of them while they wandered in that horrible place.

The expedition finally found it in the darkest nook of the Valley, half-hidden behind gnarled old edelwoods protectively spreading its hideous branches. Greg almost fell over an unexpected obstacle lurking in the snow (a derelict railway branch, he was surprised to find out), and the place caught his eye as he was trying to regain his balance. There, in the half-circle of its dead guardians, was a giant edelwood trunk that seemed to suck whatever light was allowed in the Valley of Empty Song, munch it into gloomy nothingness and spit on the ground all around it.

As they approached it, they saw that it was hollow. The cold darkness inside the trunk beckoned to Greg when he precariously leaned over the opening to peek in.

"It's here. It has to be here," whispered Snorri, nervously looking around.

"What, right in the open?" asked the rabbit. "No traps, no hidden levers to pull or stuff like that?"

"Nobody knew what place the Beast called his home until he was gone. This Valley was never on any map. What's the point protecting something no-one but you can see in the first place?"

"I still don't like it, that's all," said the rabbit. "So don't expect me to go down there and prove you wrong."

"I don't. Only someone touched by the Beast can access his treasures, remember?" Snorri nodded towards Greg. "I bet if we came alone we wouldn't even find this trunk. I sure didn't see it before the kid pointed it out to us."

"I'll go," said Greg, who was staring inside the ominous entrance while they talked, as if his gaze was an insect's antenna that could map out the surroundings without a light or touch. "We have to save Blodie."

"You have a very big heart," said Snorri thoughtfully.

Greg's heart was a wrecking ball bouncing all around his rib cage. He supposed there was a sort of truth in the dwarf's words: had it not been big enough, it would have surely squeezed through his throat and jumped out of his mouth a long while ago.

A rope was secured around the nearest tree and handed to Greg, who prepared for a long and dangerous descent. Like many of his expectations about the second visit to the Unknown, it turned out to be a false one: he was barely ten feet in when his feet struck the virgin snow gathered at the bottom of the trunk. In the light of the glowing rock on the string around his neck, which Snorri had generously provided, he could see a short tunnel leading to a spacious chamber.

Greg waved to the dwarf and the rabbit who peered from above, and fearlessly stepped in, half-expecting that the crooked fingers of the roots hanging from the earthen ceiling would reach and try to choke him. But gone was the dark hand that once might have moved them, and he went on unmolested.

The cave was not an impressive museum-like treasury Greg had expected to see, but there was no doubt they had found what they'd been looking for. Mysterious items of all sorts and sizes were haphazardly thrown around the floor, as if the owner barely cared about their well-being or maybe even kicked them into the chamber from afar, without bothering to make a few steps forward. There were chests and lockboxes, a silver mirror, a fragile lute half-buried in the ground, a rolled-up carpet, a sword half-stuck in the wall, a set of creepy marionettes, a spider statuette, a cuirass of some black metal, a framed painting covered with a red curtain, a golden cup, a quiver of silvery arrows… Greg trod carefully around all those relics, holding the glowing rock like a torchlight in front of him.

As he went deeper into the cave, he saw that some artefacts were hanging on the roots protruding from the wall, as if to escape the mess below. This is where he found the one object he desired the most – a huge black cauldron into which Greg himself could fit, its outer walls covered in ancient-looking patterns. He stared at it suspiciously, still expecting a trap, but eventually shrugged and grabbed it with both hands, taking it off its hook. Nothing happened, unless one counted the massive weight he was suddenly burdened with. He was barely strong enough to keep the cauldron above ground, and yet he persevered, backing out of the cave and back to the dim circle of light below the maw of the trunk.

"Got it!" he groaned after putting the cauldron down to tie the rope around it. The dwarf showed surprising strength by pulling it out all by himself, and the rabbit nervously shooed Greg back to the treasury, urging him to bring all the other artefacts as quickly as possible.

It was a lot like helping Mom sort out the attic, Greg decided, as he was running back and forth to carry out more and more stuff. Perhaps mysterious boxes and swords were an improvement on old chairs and broken appliances, but in practice it made little difference since he didn't have any time to learn the secrets of the former anyway. If Snorri was to be believed, neither should he want to, for the unstable nature of the artefacts was bad enough without the touch of the Beast in whose possession they had remained for quite some time. Greg indeed felt the ripples of that treacherous power once or twice, when the ancient lute brushed against the wall and played a sad, high, droning note which made his nose bleed a little, or when he accidentally kicked a ball of yarn with two knitting needles sticking out of it and, as he reached to pick it up, had an abrupt but menacing vision of a thin figure hanging upside down from a giant tree.

Greg saved the huge black cuirass for the very end, since his muscles were still complaining after the weight of the cauldron. He dragged it through the empty cave, bumped his head on a thick root in the tunnel and sat down to tie the cuirass to the end of the rope, which he then tugged to attract Snorri's attention.

"That's the last of them!" he announced, leaning against the earthen wall to catch his breath. "Did all of that stuff really fit into the chest? I absolutely gotta see it."

"Alas, my boy," said the familiar ingratiating voice from above, and Greg's blood froze in his veins as he saw Monsieur Renard's grinning face appear in the opening, "this particular request your ever-humble servant will be unable to satisfy. But I'll soften this blow, don't you worry, by telling you it is merely the first item in the endless list of your hopes which are forever doomed to remain just that – empty wishes from the bottom of our not-so-metaphorical well."

Greg was not impressed with his eloquent threats even despite being at a clear disadvantage and scared out of his wits. Although he was pretty sure Renard had already dealt with the rest of the expedition – hopefully just scared them away and nothing more – he cupped his hands around the mouth and shouted at the pitch of his voice:

"Snorri! Er… Mr. Rabbit! Run! The Fox is here!"

Monsieur Renard made a big scene out of pressing the open palm of a gloved paw to his ear and pretending to listen for a few moments.

"The Fox is indeed, as you brilliantly put it, here," he said at last. "It's the running part I have great concerns about."

"I'd rethink that if I were you!"

The exclamation was laced with defiance. It reached Greg's ears as if from far away but no doubt sounded clear enough to the Fox, who twitched and turned around to look. Greg had no idea what Renard was going to see there, but his heart finally sped up for all the good reasons at the sound of that voice.

"Wirt!" he yelled, jumping up and down in excitement. "I'm here, below! I missed you! I missed you so much! Be careful!"

"As well he should," hissed Monsieur Renard before leaping away, once more letting the ghostly light of the Valley into the well.

Greg counted to five Jason Funderburkers and jumped up to claw at the rotting walls of the trunk, trying to find any sort of hold and climb up as soon as possible. He couldn't even begin to guess how his useless, wonderful older brother was going to fight the Fox but he knew for certain Wirt was doomed to fail without his help.

* * *

After hearing Greg's voice again, as muffled and distant as it was, Wirt let out a breath which he seemed to have been holding for the whole time since their separation. The relief on his face must have been obvious to Beatrice, who squeezed his hand supportively. Of course, it was not yet time for dramatic family reunions and boxed ears, for there was still the small matter of the mortally dangerous Fox standing between the brothers and smugly studying the newcomers' faces.

"What have we here, then?" he asked himself in a sly sing-song voice. "A horse, a girl and a useless simpleton who hung himself from a tree. Frankly speaking, I find I only fear the horse. It looks like a walking flea feast, and I can't possibly have any of that nonsense on my fur, now can I?"

"Well, that was completely uncalled for," muttered Fred and showed his huge white teeth like a dog might.

Wirt's eye caught sudden movement behind Herr Reineke, and he saw the familiar motley hat with a pompon appear out of the great edelwood trunk. He made sure not to reveal his awareness by meaningful glances or gestures and gave Beatrice a barely noticeable shove with an elbow. Her silent physical reply of the same kind most likely stood for, "I know, you idiot."

"Oh, please don't fight, you wonderful lovebirds," the Fox pulled a mopey face. "As if I don't know our little honey pie is climbing out behind my back even as I speak. As if I couldn't fish his guts out of his throat in a single moment had I wanted to."

Shoots of cold sweat sprouted up all over Wirt's back and sent a shiver through his whole body. Beatrice made a move as if to rush the Fox but thought better of it. Wirt was busy despairing and calculating how he could possibly cover a hundred and a half feet that separated him from Greg before the villain made his deadly move.

"But I don't," shrugged Herr Reineke. "That's the point not one of you precious dolls seems to understand. There are so, so many ways to hurt a person without resorting to primitive violence. Isn't it so, lads?"

He clicked his fingers and pointed to the cart, where a treasure chest was guarded by an unlikely pair of a white-haired dwarf and a fluffy rabbit. Wirt couldn't say for sure, but they didn't seem to manifest any fear for their lives. Greg, who started to sidle away from the trunk and the Fox, couldn't help but turn and look. He froze on the spot, confusion plain to see on his ruddy round face. Wirt silently, and then not so silently urged him to keep moving, but his little brother didn't care.

"Are you with him?" Greg finally asked, the tone of his voice deceptively dispassionate. "Have you betrayed the G-guardians?"

A half-sob at the very end showed his true feelings, and Wirt, even though uncertain as to what was the connection between the three, couldn't help but wince on his brother's behalf.

"Guardians?" laughed the Fox. " _What_ Guardians? Oh, my little poor honey pie you."

"The Guardians of the Unknown!" shouted Greg, the sleeve of his jacket surreptitiously darting to the corner of his eye. "You're supposed to help us and protect the treasures of the Beast! And… and what about the owl?"

The Fox looked confused and scratched his chin, thoughtfully looking upwards at nothing in particular. Then the overstated realisation dawned on his wily, all too human face, and he pointed behind Greg's back.

"What, _that_ owl?"

Everyone turned to look, as it seemed beneath Herr Reineke's dubious dignity to descend to pathetic tricks. There, in the bare branches of an old crooked edelwood, indeed sat a huge grey owl, its yellow eyes looking below. It blinked as it was found by every pair of eyes in the Valley of Empty Song.

"But… I thought you were… that you were… and the Cauldron, and… and back there when he…" It pained Wirt to hear his brother's helpless, floundering voice becoming quieter and his spirits visibly sagging with every word he spoke at the owl. "There are no Guardians of the Unknown, are there?" Greg finally asked the snow beneath his feet. "I'm just a huge stinky doofus."

"If it helps you just a little bit – and I hope it doesn't – you're not the first and won't be the last," grinned the Fox. "I've seen more doofuses – or should it be _doofi?_ – than you've seen days, my little honey pie."

That seemed to instantly turn Greg from anguish to anger.

"You shut up!" he yelled at Herr Reineke, stomping his foot. The Fox, who was clearly enjoying the situation, stepped back in mock fear. Then Greg turned back to the owl. "And _you_! I trusted you! I thought you were dying! I came here to save you! Why did you fight him when he tried to attack me, then?"

As far as Wirt could judge, the bird looked pretty uncomfortable as it moved slightly along the branch, away from Greg's fiery eyes, and very quietly hooted something about having her own reasons.

"So that you would think she was dying, obviously," explained the Fox with a yawn. "And come here to save her. And got all the Beast's treasures out for me, before any of those tiresome chancers who are rumoured to have followed me here even found this place. We staged all of it, my dear. Every little part of it. Oh, there are many, many ways to make a man do your bidding – your own big brother can vouch for that, actually. But none are as pleasant as a wonderful, complex, overwrought scheme, don't you think? And I just… love it when a plan comes together!"

And he let out the nastiest, craziest snigger Wirt had ever heard, and the sound of it made all of them instinctively make a step further away from Herr Reineke. And then the Fox cut it short so suddenly that Wirt half-expected another trick from him, but the madman only threw back his head so that his nose became the topmost point of his body, and started taking disgusting deep sniffs, quietly growling as he exhaled.

"Ah, that's not a part of your amazing plan, then?" enquired Beatrice. "Being torn apart by the Hunter's hounds?"

The Fox threw her a look of pure hatred and snarled before turning around and seeing half a dozen sleek white dogs appear from behind a cluster of edelwood trees. They were huge, muscular beasts with red ears and red eyes, and in the dim light of the Valley they resembled a pack of canine ghosts as they slowly walked through the snow towards Herr Reineke, radiating primeval menace. Greg squealed and looked like jumping back into the trunk, the owl and everyone else temporarily forgotten. Wirt tried to attract his attention to make it known the hounds were on their side, but in truth, he still wasn't entirely sure of that himself.

A tall, grim man in hide armour followed the dogs, his mane of hair as white as their fur. There was a quiver on his back, only instead of arrows it contained massive throwing spears. His arrival inspired Herr Reineke to a particularly venomous snarl, but the Hunter didn't react to that one way or another, unless one counted the cold, calculating look he scanned the Fox with.

"Ah, the dog walker of Arawn, the most famous hobo in all the land!" Herr Reineke gave out a mocking laugh as if he didn't care all that much, fooling nobody. "Took you long enough to catch up with me in this delightful place."

The hounds were slowly approaching him in a loose half-circle, their ears forward, their eyes not moving away from their prey for a single moment. The Fox danced in place, steadily backing away from them and towards the cart, where the dwarf and the rabbit looked a lot more alarmed than before.

"What a sorry bunch of underfed mongrels," tutted Herr Reineke in a soothing sly voice. "And I do mean your dogs this time."

"You will not escape today, Reynard," said the Hunter, not a hint of emotion in his deep voice – just a statement of a fact.

"Watch me!"

"Hey, are you already aware that those warlocks and witches are about as real as those "Guardians" you've invented?" shouted Beatrice, but the Fox didn't risk looking behind and taking his eyes off the hounds. "The Hunter spread those rumours about them to slow you down and make you jump at every shadow instead of strolling around the place like it's your backyard."

"You shut your mouth!" snarled Reynard.

"So you _didn't_ know, did you?"

"I know more than all of you combined!"

"Yeah, just not the things that actually matter," giggled Wirt, following the girl's cue. "How does it feel to be duped, then?"

The Fox didn't reply for quite a few long moments and even stopped growling – only his deft feet were writing an intricate pattern on the snow as the dogs deliberately ate the distance between him and them foot by foot. And then his hands dived inside the pockets of his coat and flew back out before anyone could blink, and a shower of golden dust scattered in the air all around him. As the tiny specks landed on the hounds' fur, little flames blossomed and died, making the ghostly animals yelp in pain and fear. The dust hadn't settled yet, and the Fox was already racing towards his treasures and his allies, the priorities obviously in that particular order.

"I'll show you duped!" he bellowed as he jumped on the cart and threw open the lid of the chest. "I'll show you all duped! No-one dupes me! Nobody dupes me and lives!" He kicked the dwarf and the rabbit off the cart and bawled, "Deal with those!" pointing at none other than Wirt, Beatrice and Fred.

The Hunter chose that moment to throw a spear at Reynard: the weapon flew in a perfectly straight line and with such a speed as if it was spat out by an arbalest. But the Fox merely bent backwards, holding his fedora with one hand so that it wouldn't fall on the ground, and the spear pierced one of the edelwoods behind him.

"Cows and banjos, mate! Etcetera!" Reynard yelled at his enemy in murderous glee and, regaining balance, started digging inside the chest, no doubt looking for a way to return the favour. First he fished out a spider statuette and threw it at the nearest dog who, having recovered from the golden dust, was racing at him, teeth bared. Upon hitting the flesh, the figurine became a living black spider that wasted no time wrapping its many limbs around the hound's body. Wirt stared at the horrible scene, hypnotized, whereas the Fox was already searching the chest for more artefacts to use as weapons.

Beatrice tugged at his sleeve.

"Pay attention!"

And with that she pointed to the rabbit who was bounding towards them through the snow like a fluffy pompon. The dwarf lagged behind, breathing heavily and digging inside his pockets.

"What, to that cute little bunny?" Wirt giggled nervously and nearly swallowed his tongue as the rabbit took a mighty leap which would have made Mad Bill Sweeney envious, and landed on his chest, its mouth wide open to reveal two very unrabbitlike rows of creepy sharp teeth. "Ah! Get off me, you freak!"

He threw the animal away, but it rebounded off the snow like an overgrown and deadly tennis ball, and jumped at him again. Its jaws nearly locked on the arm that Wirt threw up for protection – instead the rabbit received an accidental punch in the snout, which seemed to relieve it of a tooth or two and also make it very angry. Wirt risked a glance to the left and saw Beatrice squaring up to the dwarf with a tree branch in her hands: she tried to get closer to him while avoiding the spheres of flame, which her white-bearded opponent conjured and rotated in a wide ellipse around his body like a hula-hooper on extreme sports TV.

The rabbit made another assault, its eyes now bloodshot and its teeth covered in actual blood, the combination of which made Wirt step back in panic, barely evade the animal's lunge and fall down in the snow, helplessly flapping his arms. With a cackle that rabbits were simply not allowed to produce, his opponent jumped on the boy's chest and bared its many teeth in an unhinged smile.

The rabbit would have certainly closed its jaws around Wirt's carotid artery the very next moment, but something distracted it and made it look up in confusion. Then there was a nasty but satisfying crunchy sound, and the murderous ball of fur flew for a field goal between two distant edelwoods, where it disappeared for good. Wirt didn't allow himself to breathe out until he moved his eyes as far back as his sockets allowed and saw Fred's backside looming above in dangerous proximity.

"Nice hoofing," he groaned, getting up.

"Life in prison teaches you many things."

"You've never been in prison, Fred."

"Once a thug, always a thug is all I'm saying," said the horse haughtily, and Wirt thought it best to let that one go.

Once on his feet, he used a rare moment of peace to locate Greg, and saw a terrible scene. The Fox was standing atop the cart with some mirror in his hands, laughing the way that would make the staunchest supporter of animal rights want to put him down, preferably with an axe to the head. He used the mirror to direct feeble rays of sunlight towards his opponents, and the artefact was clearly augmenting them in some nasty way, for every time it hit a hound, the beast wailed and tried to burrow into the snow, covering its eyes with its paws. The Hunter was already on his knees, his huge hands frantically rubbing his face up and down.

Of Greg himself there was no sign, until at last Wirt saw the top of his brother's head rise like a periscope of a submarine above the bush he was squatting behind. The torpedo launch followed – a massive snowball flew towards the Fox and hit him right in the face. Reynard managed to hold on to the mirror and immediately turned it towards the boy with an inhuman snarl. Greg stayed above the bush to watch if his missile hit the target, and thus had no chance to escape.

There was a ghostly silver light spreading across his stunned face, turning his eyes black and hollow, hypnotising him so quickly that he hadn't even shown a single sign of struggle. His mouth half-opened. His arms hung like ropes along his body. He looked less and less like human with every second spent facing that light.

Wirt yelled without bothering to choose a particular word, and rushed across to the cart, letting Beatrice and Fred deal with the dwarf, who seemed to be trying to retreat rather than face two opponents at once. Wirt scooped a handful of snow as he run, hastily rolled it into a ball and fired, but it harmlessly flew above the Fox's head. He picked a heavy rock and tried to hurl it at Reynard as well, but it fell way short of the cart.

However, Wirt's clumsy attempts produced the desired effect, for the Fox turned towards him first his head and then his mirror, and by that moment the boy knew better than to look at it. He bent his head low and kept running, trying not to listen to the faint, ethereal voice in his ears telling him to embrace the mirror's light. He knew he was getting closer and closer to the cart but didn't stop and braced himself for impact instead.

Wirt shouldered into the side of the cart and felt his whole body shudder at the collision. The Fox swore somewhere above, then there was a thin satisfying crack of breaking glass and a howl of rage.

"The Fairie Mirror! You will pay for his!" he hissed, looked at Wirt as if to reach for him but seemed to have changed his mind and bared his teeth in a vicious smile. He looked up towards where the owl was still waiting in the high branches of the trees, and commanded in a shrill voice, "You! Kill the little one!"

"No!" Wirt jumped back up on his feet as he saw the bird obediently descend towards Greg's hiding place, but the Fox pushed him down with a shove to the shoulder, giggling all the way.

When he managed to lift his face out of the snow and look, he saw Greg helplessly sitting on the ground and staring at the owl. Wirt couldn't see his little brother's face at that angle, but the sag of his shoulders betrayed a certain resignation. He wondered if the mirror's darkness had left for good, and he wondered if that even mattered now. Time seemed to have slowed as the bird dived for Greg, huge deadly talons thrust forward, ready to tear and cut flesh.

Wirt couldn't see his brother's face but he did see the owl, and he thought he saw a flicker of doubt it its hypnotic yellow eyes, and then he might have seen the bird's posture change from a predator's aggression to something uncertain, and then he most definitely saw the owl deliberately avoid Greg's head by a couple of inches and turn its swoop into an ascent.

"GET HIM, you useless bag of feathers!" bellowed Reynard somewhere behind, enraged beyond recognition. "Or did you forget WHY you need me?!"

The owl gave him a glance as it flew above them and slowly blinked. Then it drew a huge half-circle in the air and once more moved towards Greg, outstretching its talons.

"Oh, no, no, no, please don't…" muttered Wirt as he rose and stumbled towards his brother. He heard Beatrice scream and saw her stick fly towards the bird like a boomerang, coming nowhere close.

Then things started happening too fast for Wirt to keep track.

The owl hesitated once more. This time it stopped its dive just a few feet before it reached Greg, frantically flapping its massive wings to kill the inertia of its movement. The Fox screamed at it again, and the bird looked like finally moving in to deliver the blow, but it lingered a moment too long in the air, making itself a perfect target.

The Hunter's spear pierced the bird and the tip went out in the middle of its chest. There was no sound, there was no blood and there was no corpse falling onto the ground. The owl came apart like an unstitched stuffed toy, only instead of cotton it dropped flower petals – a snowfall of colourful puzzle pieces of spring, softly spinning in the air and landing all around Greg, who was still sitting frozen to the spot in the snow.

Before the spear even reached the bird, Reynard must have already known he had lost. The hounds were shrugging off the effects of the magic mirror following their master's example. They wanted blood and revenge. When Wirt finally took his eyes away from the flower petals which had been the owl, it was to look at the Fox, who had a handful or artefacts seemingly snatched at random in one hand and a long steel sword in the other. He was running away, waving the blade around to protect himself from the ghostly white dogs who barked loud enough to deafen everyone in the Valley as they snapped at his heels and the tails of his coat.

Reynard tried one direction, and then another, but was pressed hard by the hounds whenever he went, snarling at them and dropping his treasures one by one. More than ever before he looked like a wild animal dressed up in fancy clothes by a circus ringmaster with a poor sense of humour. He started barking, not bothering to come up with any eloquent mockeries anymore, clearly intent on one thing and one thing only – to save his hide and get out of this disastrous battle.

It looked like he would get away, after all. One hound was careless enough to allow a vicious slash on its shoulder, another couldn't avoid being kicked hard in the stomach. The Fox sped up, looking around and behind him to see how close the other dogs were, and so didn't notice what was right ahead of him. He tripped over Greg's curled body, who crawled onto his path from behind a bush, and fell gracelessly face-first in the snow.

Wirt's heart froze once more as he saw the Fox jump up and turn towards the little boy, murder overwriting self-preservation on his ugly canine snout. But neither his sword nor the hounds' teeth acted first in that pantomime. The Hunter had more than enough time to take perfect aim and throw another lightning bolt of a spear, and a somewhat comical expression of surprise on the Fox's face – once more mysteriously human – did nothing to hide the fact that the projectile landed right inside his left eye.

This time there was blood, and quite a lot of it, as Reynard collapsed in the snow like a marionette with its strings cut off.

And then there was a faint sound of harmonica playing somewhere deep inside the woods and it seemed closer and closer with each passing moment.


	12. Chapter 12: The Silver Railway

As the music swam through the air, chasing away whatever curse laid on the Valley of Empty Song, Wirt got up on his feet and ran towards where his brother was lying – a lifeless bundle of clothes next to the corpse of the Fox. He tried his best to avoid looking at Reynard but couldn't. It was a good thing Wirt had had not a morsel of food since leaving the Porters, and most of that had ended up below the giant tree a long while ago.

He helped Greg to his feet, looking into his pale face, touching his cheeks, trying to find some light in his empty eyes.

"Are you okay, man?" he was repeating. "Are you alright?"

"No."

"I know the Fox tricked you, it's fine, you shouldn't blame yourself. He tricked me as…"

"I saw something I shouldn't have," Greg interrupted, finally meeting his gaze. His voice was unnaturally level and emotionless. "In that mirror. I saw something bad. Do you understand? Oh, of course you don't."

Wirt was at a loss due to both the words and how his brother had said them: with an unnerving maturity of someone past Wirt's own age.

"W-what do you mean?"

But Greg didn't reply and instead, having shrugged his brother's arms off his shoulders, went to the spot where the owl had been trying to kill him and ended up dead itself. He sat down among the flower petals, which looked alien in this winter kingdom, and started absent-mindedly gathering them in his lap.

"She is happier now, whether you believe it or not."

Wirt turned at the sound of the familiar voice and saw Charlie's old draisine which was slowly coming to a halt on the railway branch hidden in the snow. The lions saluted the boy, and the man himself waved from his usual place at the end of the engine, looking at everyone with his silver eye-pennies.

"I don't care for her happiness," was Greg's reply.

"Be that as it may, but I still think you'll want to hear her story." Charlie jumped off the draisine and walked towards him through the snow, his long lean legs looking very much like stilts. "A long time ago a sorcerer in a faraway land made a beautiful girl out of flowers of broom, meadowsweet and oak, because his friend was cursed never to have a human wife. But the girl fell in love with her husband's rival and betrayed him, which very nearly led to his murder, and thus the sorcerer cursed her to become an owl and forever remain one, and be despised by all the other birds. The Fox must have found her during his journeys and promised to revert the curse if she helped him – to turn her back into a girl. But she was never a girl, you know. She was always flowers."

He kneeled next to Greg and fished a small iron box out of his pocket, which he opened and set on the ground between them. Then Charlie took the petals that Greg had already gathered and calmly put them inside the box.

"That's not too sad an ending is what I mean," he said.

"I'm not sad. Not about her anyways."

"As you wish."

Wirt sensed a presence to the side and just behind him, turned and found Beatrice, who grinned at him feebly. The tail of her cloak was burned, but no actual harm had come to her – unlike the hounds which the Hunter was tending to, applying unknown poultices and barely distinguishable soothing words when necessary.

"Glad to see you survived the bunny," Beatrice said as she leaned on his shoulder and watched Charlie and Greg collect flower petals.

"Glad to see the elderly midget was no match for you either."

Wirt thought about embracing her but his mind was too focused on Greg's state of mind for him to bother it with frantic inner discussions as to whether or not a hug would be appropriate behaviour.

"Glad to see you aren't forgetting anyone," neighed Fred behind their backs. "It's not like horse discrimination is still a… Holy centaurs, what is going on there?!"

Horses were notoriously short on appendages for pointing to stuff, but he didn't really need to do that: both Wirt and Beatrice had already noticed that the Fox, still with a spear in his eye, was clambering up to his feet, coughing blood and muttering under his breath. It was a ghastly scene which made them take a wary step back. Alarmed, Wirt turned to look at the Hunter, but the white-haired man just glanced at the Fox with mild curiosity and went back to tending to his dogs. Charlie was also oozing serenity, although he did make a meaningful gesture addressed to the lions, who climbed down from the draisine and moved towards Reynard.

"You think you can defeat me?" croaked the Fox, trying to straighten up. "You think you've won… puny… mortals?"

"The evidence points to the obvious," said Charlie, and at that very moment each of the lions grabbed Reynard's arm, bending it behind his back, and pushed him towards the engine. The predator laughed as he stumbled on, causing more blood to drip from his pierced eye-socket and his mouth.

"You have no power over me, not even you! I will never travel down that road with you or anybody else! There is a toll which I would never pay! No, ladies and gentlemen, Reynard the Fox will _never_ be bound by the likes of you!"

The lions stopped short. Charlie seemed deep in thought.

"That is a problem, of course."

"A-ha! I know my rights, you old carrion bird!" the Fox bared his teeth in an ugly bloody smile. "I've got all of you in my pockets, each and every one of you!"

Suddenly Wirt felt his heart beating faster. Shoving his fear aside, he approached Reynard, who did his best to unnerve the boy by nodding and laughing, which caused the spear to move up and down inside his eye and spill more blood on the red snow. But Wirt didn't let himself be intimidated and instead reached for the Fox's coat pocket, out of which he fished a small silver penny.

"I guess he has the means to pay the toll after all," he announced to the lions.

"Not mine! Not mine! One penny! This is only one penny!" shrieked Reynard, thrashing and twitching and trying to free himself from their grasp.

"And you do have only one eye now," winked Beatrice.

"Cheats! Crooks! Liars! Liars! Let me go!" the Fox howled and wailed as the lions picked him up by the armpits and proceeded to carry him to the engine. "I will return! I will find a way to return! I always find a way! You will pay! You will pay dearly for your insolence, you ignorant… crooks!"

The lion with a cigarette held him tight as the other one found a large white sack on the floor of the draisine and put it on Reynard's head, bending the spear down with a revolting champing sound. It had silenced the struggling Fox, and the lions unceremoniously threw him down in the corner of the platform.

"Is that true?" Wirt asked the Hunter, still shuddering inwardly. "About him… returning and all?"

"You shouldn't worry too much about it," was the taciturn reply. Neither Wirt nor Beatrice decided to press the issue, and Greg simply seemed not to care.

Greg was generally displaying uncharacteristic apathy towards everything that had been happening all around him. He was still sitting cross-legged in the snow, and it took Charlie a few words whispered to his ear as well as a mighty tug to lift the boy up. Greg reached for Jason Funderburker and mumbled something to his frog as he walked past Wirt and Beatrice, heading nowhere in particular.

"What happened to my brother?" Wirt bluntly asked, staring into the twinkling eye-pennies of the engine driver.

Charlie sighed before answering.

"The Fairie Mirror cursed by the touch of the Beast showed him… let's call it the inside of life and death. It is a ghastly thing to see, especially at an age so young. Even a flicker of light reflected by the Mirror is enough to confuse you and muddle your mind with otherworldy visions, and the boy looks like he faced it full-on for quite some time."

"What exactly is it? That… _inside_?"

"Imagine seeing the currents which bring death to the shores of the living, in all their terrifying, nightmarish splendour. Imagine seeing the grains of sand of the Great Clock relentlessly fall on the heads of those you love. Imagine seeing Chaos itself consume the order of the universe bit by bit. Imagine seeing all that and many other horrible, painfully genuine seams which hold the fabric of existence in place."

Wirt groaned and massaged his temples, after which he turned to look at his brother, who was leaning against an edelwood with all the resignation in the world. His fingers were absentmindedly stroking the temple of the frog, but his mind was clearly elsewhere, and Wirt shuddered to imagine where exactly.

"How can we help him?" asked Beatrice.

"The cure can be found in the Fairie Realm far away to the north from here, past old wild rivers and young cocky mountains, sprawling ancient cities and haunted villages, sunless caves and dark forests which have never seen a glimpse of man in their lifetime. It is a very long and dangerous journey, I'll have you know."

"Oh, I've figured," sighed Wirt and stole a glance at the Hunter. "But I'll go to the end of the world to see Gregory smile again, you know, if only…" He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Won't that guy over there kick me out because I don't belong here or something?"

"What nonsense!" snorted Charlie. "How can you not belong here when you see your own path unravelling before you, when you have your brother to save and your girl to look after?"

"She's not _my_ girl," Wirt interjected at the same time as Beatrice said, "I'm my own girl." Then, however, she looked at him sharply with those lively green eyes and said in a cryptic tone of voice, "Oh, is that so now?"

Wirt tried to stammer out a reply that wouldn't make him look more idiotic than he must have already seemed to her, but eventually gave up and turned back to Charlie.

"What about our parents? Does the time go for them the same way as it goes for us? Or are we, like, in some pocket continuum where we can wander for seven years and then be back for dinner like nothing's happened?"

"By now you're probably aware that after some journeys you can never be back for dinner like nothing's happened," said the old engine driver, thoughtfully looking past them at Greg. "But it's your brother you should be worrying about right now, not your parents. I'll pay them a visit once we're done with our friend Reynard, actually. Some explanations will follow, which they will accept. I have a lot of experience… assuaging grief, so to speak. Even in the most unusual circumstances."

He smiled, not unkindly, and Wirt nodded. If there was a person – or entity – in the whole world who could explain the situation to their parents, on the whole as grounded as a fifth grader caught with a cigarette, it would be Charlie Acorn.

"Been nice meeting you all," he said, gently cupping Wirt's and Beatrice's shoulders in turn. Fred earned a pat on the head, too. Before going back to his engine, Charlie approached Greg, whispered something in his ear and then suddenly bent down and kissed his forehead. The boy seemed a bit confused and looked around, as if unsure where he was, but then the familiar gloom descended on his round face once more and he frowned. Still, he looked a little less lost than before, to his brother's eye, and Wirt, despite not having a clue what just happened, mouthed a thank-you when Charlie turned back to wave at them from his draisine.

The lion with the cigarette inhaled for the last time before tucking it away behind his ear, and breathed out a thick column of smoke, as if from a real locomotive. He and his partner joined forces at the pump and got the engine going, and its creaky sounds drowned in the melody of Charlie's harmonica solo, which was followed by a melancholic verse:

 _Sweet is the silvery song of the railways a-leaving,_

 _Long is the road through the dark of the night of your soul,_

 _Mournful are voices of past as they swim, interweaving,_

 _Weeping, "Tomorrow, tomorrow I'll know what it's like to be whole…"_

Wirt must have immersed himself too deeply into the song, for Beatrice had to take his face in her hands before he would notice her standing before him. Her palms were cool and soft against his cheeks. She looked into his eyes, searching for something.

"We'll make him whole again, do you hear me? I'll be by your side as long as you need me. Which is likely, let's face it, until the bitter end."

" _I_ won't," interjected Fred. "The first decent stable I find? I'm bailing on you lot. Dark forests and wild caves? Thank you very much, seen one – seen them all…"

"Nevermind the horse," said Beatrice as if Fred wasn't there. "His heart's in the right place, but he's a bit too full of himself."

"That tea business really went to his head, didn't it?"

"Wait till I tell you how he got fired," grinned Beatrice, at which point Fred started loudly complaining about some non-existent insults he supposedly faced in their company on the hourly basis, and walked towards Greg, leaving them alone.

She took her palms away from his face, but Wirt caught them midway down with his own hands.

"I just wanted to say… thank you so much, Beatrice. For coming back and for helping us… helping me… and, well, for everything, really. I couldn't have done it without you."

"That much is obvious," she solemnly nodded, although her eyes were smiling.

Wirt wasn't finished, even though the sand in his throat and acupuncture down the back of his neck urged him to stop as soon as possible.

"I think when I was hanging down that tree… or maybe just afterwards, I'm not sure… anyway, I realised that I do what I'm told all too often for my liking, you know. I know I'm not one of _those_ people, who grab their fortune by the horns or whatever, and I don't think I'll suddenly change but… I guess sometimes I do need to think for myself and do what _I_ want."

Beatrice listened silently, slightly tilting her head to one side. She was so beautiful, even in the ghostly light of the Valley.

"And, you know, I wanted to ask if you really did… you know… when I was upside down on that rope, or if it was just a hallucination, but then I thought: what would it change, really? If you didn't, that wouldn't make me stop wishing it was real, and if you did, then surely you knew what you were doing?"

"Wirt," Beatrice said, very calmly, "I recognise all the words you say but they don't fit together quite as well as you probably imagine they do."

"Oh, I know," he rolled his eyes with a quiet groan. "I make no sense, do I?"

"You very rarely do. It can actually be cute sometimes."

"Go figure," Wirt shrugged, and then he slowly leaned forward and found her lips with his, and his heart was about to explode when he felt Beatrice meeting his kiss and wrapping an arm around his neck, and the whole Valley of Empty Song suddenly seemed full of music he had never heard on the best of his tapes, and he had no idea one could be as sad and as happy at the same time as he was in that fragile moment.

They said goodbye to the Hunter, who gathered all the treasures of the Beast, harnessed the three healthy hounds to carry the cart with the chest and the wounded dogs, and departed to lands unknown without saying much. It was time for them to leave as well, and Beatrice fished out an old compass to see where the north was. Wirt remembered how he had thought the Valley would be the end of their journey, and instead they found themselves at the very start of an even longer and more dangerous road.

"So you were looking for adventures, I heard?" he sighed as he and Beatrice followed Fred who was carrying Gregory on his back. "You seem to have found a pretty big one."

"Just the kind I prefer," she smirked. "And what about you? Probably regret leaving home now?"

Wirt thought about the long empty days back on the familiar side of the Wall, about Greg losing himself even without the help of any Fairie Mirrors and about his own dreams plagued by ghostly grey shapes.

"I don't know. I regret not being able to protect Greg, that's for sure. But coming here? I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Isn't that sad?"

"Nothing is just happy or just sad, in my experience," Beatrice shrugged. "There's always some sort of balance, I guess? Not always a fair one, obviously, but… It just seems balanced, on the whole. Have you noticed?"

"Yeah. That'll be my experience, too," Wirt replied and took her hand in his.

And they walked on.

 **The end.**

* * *

 **Some references, smugly explained**

 **Charlie Acorn** – Charon, the psychopomp of Greek mythology who ferries dead souls over Hades + Aker, the ancient Egyptian god of earth and death "guarding the gate to the other side" (often depicted as a pair of twin lions).

 **The Owl** – Blodeuwedd, a character in Welsh Mabinogion whose story is pretty much the one Charlie told Greg.

 **The Fox / Mnsr. Renard / Herr Reineke / Reinaert** – Reynard the Fox, a prominent trickster figure in French, Dutch, English and German folklore.

 **The rabbit** – the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, a well-known character of the Arthurian mythology.

 **Mad Bill Sweeney** – Suibhne, the cursed king of Dál nAraidi from the Irish text "Buile Shuibhne".

 **The cauldron** – Pair Dadeni, the Cauldron of Rebirth in Welsh mythology. Of course, technically it could be any cauldron.

 **The Porters** – as in "Beatrice Portinari", the character from Dante's Divine Comedy, if we assume that's where Beatrice got her first name.

 **The ash tree** – Yggdrasil, the tree of the world in Nordic mythology. Wirt's hallucinations depict the common imagery associated with the tree.

 **The Hunter** – Gwyn ap Nudd, the king of the Fair Folk in Welsh mythology associated with the Wild Hunt.

 **The Hunter's hounds** – Cŵn Annwn, the ghostly dogs of Arawn, the Welsh underworld.

(There are probably other references that I've already managed to forget… Thank you all for reading, anyways! Special thanks to those who supported me the most with their feedback, namely Whiggity and BrutalCuriousity)


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